Cousky's Weblog

Free book review

cousky — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:47:27 +0000

Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson’s best-selling book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” explains the history, the origins, psychological effects and the future of one single word, “Free,” and how offering something for nothing or almost nothing is, in his eyes the new right way of doing business.

Anderson believes that Free as a concept is undergoing a dichotomy: Mistrusted by older generations, embraced and almost expected by the younger ones. As the economy keeps progressing from atoms to bits, Free will become the rule rather than the exception and he believes that is a good thing as it will force businesses to remain more competitive rather than less.

It is my opinion that in his eagerness, Anderson becomes his own worst enemy. He turns his book into a scattered list of figures, examples and anecdotes of Free succeeding and failing, although mostly succeeding. Instead of a more orderly essay akin to Anderson’s previous best seller, “The Long Tail,” the reader gets into a bumpy rollercoaster that only slows down toward the end chapters.

Anderson’s “Free,” much like “The Long Tail” is entertaining and engaging, with references to popular culture that make it easy to understand the concept of Free at first.

However, Anderson’s belief in the concept of Free is so strong that he overwhelms the reader with information, which tends to work against his argument, as they tire and confuse the reader rather than convince.

Right from the start, he begins the prologue with a 21^st century example –Monty Python- and a smart, sharp contrast between how people respond to Free in the 21^st century and how they did in the 20^th century. The latter point is well made and anyone who encountered a two-for-the-price-of-one in the last ten years can relate to that.

Anderson then follows the prologue with stories from the 20^th century –Jell-O and Gillette—an examination of the roots of the word Free, an economics lesson on the types of Free in today’s market, and a history lesson on Free, from the Babylonians to the 1990s.

Then, we’re back to the beginning with more psychology on chapter 4 and then we’re thrust back into a historical survey of the mid-1900s in chapter 5. From the 21^st century, to the fourth century and then back to the 20^th century again, and by this point we’re not even one-fourth into the book

Such back-and-forth buries something truly astounding: the reality of businesses making money by turning their merchandise into free goods. Twenty-two years ago, greed was good. Now, to hear Anderson tell it, freed is good.

In the midst of Anderson’s barrage of information, three redeeming qualities are worth noting. First, it is my opinion that Anderson comes across as an honest writer, unafraid to give space to those who doubt that the concept of Free he so loves is nothing more than a gimmick.

Instead of offering the literary equivalent of a dismissive shrug, we get an understanding, if succinct view of why people would and do fear the concept of Free.

This is first mentioned in the prologue and later given a chapter of its own, with a list of reasons why some people don’t quite buy into the concept. Reasons range from fear of getting burned (i.e. Free isn’t really gratis after all) to the idea of Free being synonymous with something of low quality.

It is quite an accomplishment for Anderson to even try to be that objective, when one considers how committed and into the concept of Free the author is.

Second, and this is particularly useful to the uninitiated reader, Anderson pairs this list of reasons people mistrust the concept of Free with two more sections that define and synthesize why and how Free works. After Anderson’s almost stream-of-consciousness approach to the book, these lists are a welcome change.

Third, Anderson offers examples from all over the world, a globalizing trait shared by Anderson’s prior best-seller, “The Long Tail.”

This time, Anderson tells the reader about street vendors in Brazil, piracy and doctors in China and a Danish gym that charges you only if you don’t go work out.

This, besides showing the amount of work Anderson put into this book, also shows the global impact of the Free phenomenon, for better or worse.

However, as remarkable as Anderson’s capacity for research is, I still believe Anderson’s heart overcame his brain when writing this book.

It is such his love for the topic and so constant his hopscotching from one thing to the next that it almost reads like a blog at times, choppy and disconnected from one topic to the other, (e.g., “Nature Wastes Life”, dealing with, among other things deoxyribonucleic acid, followed by “Making the world safe for cat videos,” which deals with YouTube.)

It’s almost like he opened a faucet and tried to pour every argument in favor of Free he could find.

Once you get past the fact that you never know where the book is going to take you next, this is a decent read. If this book is readable at all, it is because of Anderson’s skill at writing in a way that is colloquial without being condescending.

In conclusion I would recommend this book openly with just the following caveat. Those who loved The Long Tail and are expecting more of the same precise prose will find plenty of a lot of things in this book, but not that. This book makes the reader wonder, but also meander. This book informs and amuses but also confuses.

References List

Anderson C., (2009) Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Hyperion Press, New York, NY.

Pressman, E. (producer) Weiser, S. [writer] & Stone, O. (writer/director) (1987) Wall Street [Motion picture] United States, Twentieth Century Fox.

Wealth of Networks Re-Review

cousky — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:51:28 +0000

Yochai Benkler’s the Wealth of Networks explains and describes the mechanics of a new model, the Information Economy, that instead of being powered by the forces of capitalism is, at least in its current non-monetized stages, powered by the force of altruism.

It is my belief that Benkler’s book does a good job in explaining the rules of this new model, sometimes even too good a job as you’ll see below.

However, I also do believe it’s yet to be seen how this model will fare once the lowercase ‘wealth’ of networks and crowds clashes with the individual desire to create actual wealth.

In the book, Benkler speaks of a new model of consumer-created content and crowd-engineered information distribution, which in turn displace the traditional elites in charge up until a few years back of distributing content.

By putting these tasks in the hands of the many instead of the few, Benkler may be accused of being an anti-capitalist or a socialist. However, right away he states he is not after the wiping out of capitalism via this new model. He goes as far as to state he is not anti-capitalism and that placing an information economy in the hands of the state would be as unsuccessful and just as unpopular as traditional state-run economies were.

In an information economy, Benkler says, capital is just as necessary as it was in an industrial information economy –the type of economy that dominated the twentieth century, and in an industrial economy, the model borne after the Industrial Revolution.

At the same time, a different, less tangible reward, -reputation- also takes a front row seat in this economy.

For people who grew up with the image of the United States as the cradle of capitalism and the exploitation of man by man, this notion is informative and eye-opening. The concept of a democratized access to knowledge fueled by the actions of people wanting rewards other than money contradicts any stereotype people might have of the United States as an imperialistic society of cash-hungry, ruthless citizens.

One of Benkler’s examples of this new democratization is Wikipedia. To Benkler, as it is also stated in his own Wikipedia entry, the “Free Encyclopedia” has managed to turn consumers into users. It has also allowed these newly empowered consumer-users to do more for and by themselves. Not only can they produce new content by writing articles, but they can improve the existing content by editing the works of others.

By putting the crowds in a position to dictate the content, Wikipedia broadens its own scope of topics, thus besting competitors such as Encyclopedia.com and Encarta.

A more specific example of this can be found in the video Open Source Economics, where Benkler compares the three encyclopedias mentioned above and the way they cover a simple topic such as Barbie dolls. While Encarta is succinct and Encyclopedia.com only mentions Klaus Barbie, Wikipedia’s article is 2,872 words long, and that’s not including the list of references and external links, as well as five related articles.

It is this phenomenon of masses collaborating while at the same time displacing the traditional means of information, morphing the traditional hoops through which said information has had to travel (e.g. copyright versus Creative Commons) and taking the power of content creation away from elites what Benkler calls the “Wealth of Networks,” a play on the title of Adam Smith’s book “The Wealth of Nations.”

Benkler’s book is not an easy read, not meant for an afternoon on the beach or a long flight. It is thorough to the point of being dense and its vernacular is thick with long sentences that for the rookie reader such as myself require reading at least twice over.

Also, I wish Benkler had mentioned how this new empowerment of the masses via participatory social production will handle the production of tangible goods. I wish he had mentioned whether this ‘wealth’ will stay in the realm of information technology or move on to other areas of our lives.

Perhaps not to how it will affect the purchase of the ingredients of a family’s holiday meal but how those ingredients will make it from the manufacturer to dinner tables all over the world.

What it lacks in colloquial speech and futuristic views of traveling food, it makes up for in honesty. Benkler has the guts to state that two of the great unanswered questions of this information economy model are 1) how it will fare when these same people participating want to make money out of it, and 2) how, if at all, will money ever be made out of it.

These are, undoubtedly, fair and important questions as they deal with the struggles between a new economic model based on altruism and people’s selfish instincts.

Although they remain unanswered, the mere mention of them in Benkler’s book should ease the fears of people who see in Benkler’s people-first, money-second model a return to more extreme views such as those espoused by 1960 guerrilla icon Che Guevara., who suggested that a society’s main means of recompense should be the psychological satisfaction of a job well done and not necessarily any tangible economic benefits.

Overall, although difficult to read and layered with over-inflated sentences and an academician’s pomposity, Benkler’s book offers an honest view of the benefits and problems posed by this new model, in which at least for now, altruism is king.

I recommend it for anyone willing to learn more than they ever wanted to know about this topic. If you are looking for a quick once-over, this is not the book for you.

However, if you’re looking to understand the equation of technology plus crowds equaling the fuel for the economy in the twenty-first century, then Benkler has a wealth of knowledge to share, and does just that through the pages of this tome.

References

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks, How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

Benkler, Y. (2008) Open Source Economics. YouTube video TED Talks.

Wikipedia (2009) . Yochai Benkler entry. Retrieved Dec. 12, 2009 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yochai_Benkler

Reflections. Dec. 10 2009

cousky — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:47:36 +0000

I became part of the long tail before I even heard of The Long Tail.

I have a tiny niche Web site where I broadcast the soccer games of a small team in Yakima, of all places, to an audience that is maybe in the tens, if not or the dozens. And by dozens I mean, three dozens, tops. And I have had this web site for about a year now, if that. And I understood what the Long Tail within the last six months. Tops.

But perhaps the fact that I did it before what I understood what I was doing was the Long Tail, is what made Anderson’s concept make sense more quickly once I learned of it.

Now that I connected the dots, for some reason I feel more optimistic that I’m not just weeping into the wind. Perhaps it’s a sense of misery-loving company, but honestly, knowing that I’m part of a phenomenon bigger than just me makes me feel more optimistic about the prospect of it. I agree with Tessa’s view that the ones making the “Kwan” (to use a “Jerry Maguire” phrase) are the aggregators and not the little guy, but examples such as the one she gave of the West Seattle Blog energize me that it’ snot a an exercise in futility what I’m doing. I”m part of a broad range of options, and if I give my option an edge, whichever it may be, I’m an equal competitor with a variety of voices out here on the powerful tail.

Review: The Long Tail

cousky — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 22:54:38 +0000

Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business is Selling Less of More,” tries to explain the progression of retail commerce at all levels from one that is driven by scarcity . –the few so-called “hits” or “best sellers”– to one that is driven by abundance and choice.

In Anderson’s view, all those nonhits, long obscured by the attention procured to the few -by comparison- best sellers, are now available to the public thanks to the Internet. And while their individual sales may never reach jaw-dropping levels, all their sales combined make up an important slice of the business pie.

It is my opinion that Anderson does an excellent job of sustaining this argument, all the while managing to remain didactic and not falling into pomposity or dense rhetoric. It is an interesting, sometimes even amusing –how many textbooks use the word “crappy “or make puns about the book’s title?– look at the way we used to get what we want and the way we do it now.

For starters, Anderson introduces the reader to why we view popular culture the way we do. The world of the blockbuster, he argues, nudged us into aiming our eyes –and our wallets– toward what the respective tastemakers of each industry considered to be hits, and thus worthy of said attention.

Then, Anderson argues that this culture of the hit as supreme ruler of our eyes, wallets and tastebuds — may be on its way out. The most watched TV shows today wouldn’t even break the top 10 in the 1970s, he says, and the top recording artists of all time mostly became so the same decade.

As means of an example, he points out that during the 1960s, one out of every eight cars driven in America was an Impala. One simple look at the highways and one may conclude that said dominance is impossible these days. There are plenty of SUVs and large pickups, -especially east of the Cascades– but we no longer are so unified in what we like, to watch, read, listen to, or drive. The chat around the watercooler, he states, is no longer assured to be about something we all did.

In Anderson’s book, our expanding tastes in these four areas are the tip of the iceberg. No longer forced to accept what the shelves of brick-and-mortar stores have to offer as all there is consumers now have the possibility of going directly into the Internet’s endless shelves of products where the popular and the unknown sit side by side.

This shattered the unifying aspects of popular culture into a long continuation of small niches, a.k.a, a ‘long tail’ of niches to follow the small group of ‘hits, a.k.a., the “head.”

The long tail, Anderson argues extends beyond commercial commodities. He considers online universities the Long Tail of education, customized t-shirts as the Long Tail of fashion, and even stateless terrorist organizations are the Long Tail of national security and warfare.

Ubiquitous as the Long Tail may be, Anderson stops short of offering a rose-colored picture of this phenomenon. Certain conditions must happen in order for the Long tail to benefit consumers and not just be a bumpy trip down a long list of half-baked imitations, knockoffs and simply low-quality stuff.

Variety and more choice alone will not shift demand away from the best-sellers and into the niches. At times, as seen by its jam example, variety sometimes overwhelms, resulting in fewer sales.

First, reaching these niches can’t be expensive, which thanks to the Internet and its combination of cheap broadband capacity, search engines and digital distribution, it no longer is in America.

Second, there must be a way to filter the digital wheat from the chaff. Thanks to a myriad of recomendations, rankings and once again those powerfully discriminating search engines people can reach what fits them best, not just what sells best. Third, customers must do the work of not just connoiseurs, but advertisers, Anderson argues, spreading the word through reviews and carrying an important part of the advertising cost.

The Long Tail, Anderson states, is not perfect and he offers Wikipedia as an example. The same thing that makes Wikipedia so versatile, its capacity to be updated by anyone at any time, opens it to criticism due to its variable degrees of accuracy.

However, among those same people who can besmirch entries with their half-truths, sit people with a computer at the ready, prepared to clean Wikipedia’s act if need be.

Wikipedia, as a result, is perhaps less authoritative but far more fluid, even more ‘alive’ of a document than some of its competitors -which can only be updated on the next edition.

Lastly, it is important to note that the abundance of Long Tail-type niches does not mean the end of the hit. In fact, Anderson would argue that in a way the head and the tail need each other. A merchant only offering products at the tail will find himself surrounded by customers who have no idea where to start, themselves surrounded by products varied in their origin but unified by their obscurity.

Moreover, the bricks and mortar stores still hold an advantage over online commerce: the instant gratification of paying for something and getting it right away.

However, a merchant only offering best-sellers will find himself a slave to limited shelf space, all the while contending with a curious consumer culture that will always be wondering if there isn’t something else “in the back.” Which now, thanks to unlimited choice and the Internet, there is, just not on those shelves.

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend Andersons book for anybody wanting a first look at how the masses’ interaction with popular culture has shifted over the years and where it is headed now that the Internet has unveiled the broad expanse of options that lie beneath the bright lights shining upon what we think of as hit in today’s world.

References,

Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. New York, NY. Hyperion.

Reflections

cousky — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:44:18 +0000

This is what I’m talking about when I say that the terminology is way over my head sometimes. Our guest speaker said “We don’t do any grey hat or black hat” and quite a few people nodded. While people were testing the flexibility of their necks I had to look it up. Same with astroturfing and sock-puppeting. Self-actualizing and coalescing. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on k…, oh, nevermind. One other thing that caught my eye was the whole Barbie thing. Clearly the capacity to be updated and to fly off in a thousand different directions is one of the great strengths of things like Wikipedia and it was great to hear Benkler talk about it once again. Back when I was a kid we had this big, thick Sopena encyclopedias on the bookshelves. And if it wasn’t there, we were pretty screwed when it came to researching for our homework. Now Wikipedia has articles and articles about things you couldn’t and probably wouldn’t find on a traditional, tangible encyclopedia. And it’s not just the Barbie/Klaus Barbie thing. Examples abound not just of that but of how up-to-date Wikipedia can be. For instance, the NFL’s fining of Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams appeared a day or so after it happened on Wikipedia’s Adams article. One of the things I’ve always loved about living in this country is that if you seek you will find. That applies to everything: good or bad, there’s at least one of it in these US of A. What brought this to mind was the fact that now the seven dwarfs (dwarves?) have their own facebook pages. So if you’re a Disneyaholic (much like the one I married) you will find a page exclusively dedicated to 1/8th of Disney’s oldest full-length feature film (it’s actually 1/12th if you count the queen, the prince and the huntsman, but I digress). At the same time, the very existence of these pages could be coiunted as a sign of American decadence, much like George Carlin denounced the waste of television airtime on bulletins about Mickey Mouse’s birthday, which incidentally is Nov. 18)

Reflection week 6

cousky — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 03:13:21 +0000

Mashups intrigue me but what really intrigued me was Matt’s comment about how Mashups are part of human nature. I rarely agree- with-slash-understand what Matt is talking about but this one, I must say, I thought was a total bull’s-eye. Mashups ARE a part of human nature. It’s human instinct. Think back when you were a kid and you were playing with the toy truck and the cat. Sooner or later you were going to try to find out if the truck could carry the cat. Then, you got a little older and you tried the same thing, only this time it was liquids found inside glass bottles and a blender.Mashups are in an odd way biological chemistry with a beat. Add a to b and end up with c. Difference is, nobody, as far as I know, ever risked breaking the laws and/or going to jail for mixing zinc and copper and ending up with brass or for mixing club soda and orange juice.

Mixing Stefani and Spears and ending up with what we saw in class? Well…

Should mashups be illegal? They already are in a way, as their nickname ‘bastard pop’ may attest.As a writer, I say heck yeah, but as a consumer, I go ‘wait a minute.’

Maybe it’s my rudimentary knowledge of the matter that makes me think that if there is no commercial purpose attached to the work, maybe they are okay. Maybe if the purpose can be attested to be a tribute or an educational matter, then maybe a mashup would be okay. I’m pretty sure, and I say this as a consumer that the makers of Britney Spears’ video may not be so thrilled withthe idea of their hours of work reduced as an accompaninment to someone else’s work.

On the other hand, and I’ll freely admit to being naive here, it could be beneficial for the artist in a way. For instance, there’s a mashup that I love, the characters of Peanuts singing and dancing to “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” by the British band The Police. I’ve wanted to buy a The Police record ever since I listened to that mashup and I’m just waiting for payday. I know most people today won’t go for the record store and instead just download it on the cheap (or on the free and illegal, further screwing the artist) but that’s how I reacted to it.

Reflection Week 3

cousky — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:12:57 +0000

It is with no small amount of trepidation that I type this. In no small part because I’m not entirely sure I follow the concept of Free just yet.

Free to me has always been a dangerous word. From the days of my childhood where the military dictatorship I lived in took over the bottling factories and began making and selling a soda, that tasted like cola. The name, of course, was Free Cola. Say that three times fast and the memory of a throat lozenge is sure to come up. The soda soon folded, as did the regime.

Anyway, I digress. Free. I was taught that nothing is for free. Everybody wants something for nothing, But in the internet, wanting something can set you back. Big time. I read cnnsi.com infinite more times than espn.com. Why? Because of ESPN Insider, which I’m not even sure it’s paid anymore but which still cuts articles in half with a statement “TO READ THE REST OF THIS YOU HAVE TO BE AN ESPN InSider.” Like I said. I’m not even sure if they charge anymore, but the mere fact that they still won’t give it up for free and still want something makes me switch to cnnsi.com as fast as I can possibly type.

The first time I heard about the giving something for nothing was in a book that has little to do with social media. It was Robert Pausch poignant memoire “The Last Lecture,” where he mentions the tale of the $100,000 salt shaker. When he was a kid, he bought at Disneyland a salt shaker for his parents. He was so excited to show it to his mom that he tripped and fell, breaking it into a thousand pieces. He told the Disney people the story, they replaced it for free that very day and since then, he figured he had spent about 100 grand at Disney. The similes here are a bit hard to find but they’re still there. I’m still a cnnsi.com consumer, years after the appearance on the scene of ESPN InSider. I subscribe to SI and not to ESPN (my subscription comes without the swimsuit issue, so that was not a factor in the decision) and my favorite writer in ESPN.com is Rick Reilly, whom I first became a fan of when he posted his column on, you guessed it, CNNSI.com

Today, it seems riskier than I can ever remember before, to ask something in return if you’re a web site. It seems that everything out there can be had for free. The U.S. soccer commentators made a big stink about how there was no way to watch U.S. versus Honduras within the continental U.S. because of a broadcasting-rights issue. At least three Web sites offered the game for the price of zero.

It seems, given the examples presented by Anderson, such as King Gillette, that everything is in reverse these days. When I was growing up, the trick to make something saleable, was to make it exclusive. If you advertised on TV, your product was not good enough and needed that extra push. A good product, the saying went, back in 1980s Chile, sells itself. Now the key, it seems is to make your product ubiquitous, accessible, and here’s the real kick in the pants, really good and really cheap at the same time.

Not that people aren’t still willing to pay. I forked over 30 bucks a month for about two years just so I could watch international soccer and I fell for the trap that was NYT Select when it first came into being back in the late 1990s. What’s weird is that I paid for NYT select merely out of a misplaced need for status. “I read the New York Times, lah-dih-da! When NYT finally put Select out of its misery, I kept on reading. Not out of status but because I liked it.

But llike I said before,t he real shocker of this new economy of free is that cheap and good aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive anymore. It used to be that you had to pick between something good, something cheap or something fast. Now the costs are such that you can have all three!

Com 548 Week 1 Post

cousky — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:34:06 +0000

Even if I get no points for this, I wanted to post something. I was wrong about this class.

I expected (molre than a little terrified) that this class was going to be a times-table, carry-the-three type of math-related class. I’m glad to find out that there’s a human element to this class, dealing with an audience -both in the context of presentations and posts and also in the material–and also I’m glad to find out that it’s not all about numbers but more about a facet of numbers.

My brother studied macro economy for years in college and I guess that since then I’ve been rather spooked by the concept, watching him struggle with it for years. That’s as close I’ve ever come to an economics class.

What I’d like to learn from this class is not so much the how to monetize this new social media phenomenon but more along the lines of why (or why not) to monetize. Some may call me a socialist but I still think that there are places in teh world that have no access to this revolutionary medium called the internet and that perhaps our concern should be, at least partially in making sure everyone has access to it, or as many as possible at least, before we begin worrying on how to make a buck off it

That, as Kathy says, is my time on the soapbox.

My experience trying to monetize social media is limited to my job as a podcaster, so in that regard it will be interesting to learn what’s new. I’m pretty sure there’s more to monetization of social media than just getting a paycheck at the end of the season.

See you Tuesday

BigThink.

cousky — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:02:42 +0000

I liked the video, there are certain points that he made that I totally agree with. For instance, the concept of distraction, the glorification or at least the preponderance of short thinking. Also, it used to be, it took more than knowing how to dance down the aisle at your wedding in order to be famous or seen by millions of people. It’s watered down things to the point that we have sites where everybody is an expert or a star in much shorter order than, say, it took people who first revolutionized performing arts to become one.

The clutter brought about by viral media also drowns out the smart stuff, this guy says, and I agree. For every video teaching you how to do something or making a point, there’s 10 videos of a guy trying to make his cat play the ukulele.

I also agree with the positives of segmentization. I am no Web wizard and I have had people from all over America listen to my little podcasts of a nowhere team playing in a nowhere city, just because I happen to offer what they want. I think that’s awesome. It also reminded me, however, of the phenomenon that occurred a few years back with magazines, where a magazine for sports became a magazine for that sport and a magazine for that sport and a magazine for that sport; which in time became a magazine each for sport 1, left-handed practitioners of sport 1, sport 2, Latino practitioners of sport 2, sport 3 and female practitioners of sport 3.

Anyway, if there was something I could add to this video would be in the area of cons. Yeah, thanks to sites like MySpace and Facebook and that one that sounds like a trembling body spasm, we are able to stay in touch easier than we used to. But we’ve also lost face-to-face time. There have been times when my wife and I are both on Facebook, doing two separate things, not a word exchanged between us, and we’re sitting on the same couch! It’s come to the point sometimes that for people Facebook has become sort of an escapism from having to deal with three-dimensional people.

Lastly, all this viral stuff may be doing wonders for some, but it’s hell on my attention span. I disconnected twice while the guy was talking and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that his was one of the most interesting points I’d seen made on the Web that day.

“Any activity engaged in by more than four people in this country, has got a magazine devoted to it. Skydiving, snowmobiling, Back-packing, , Bungee jumping. Duck hunting, skeet-shooting, playing pool, shooting someone in the ass with a dart gun…they probably got a magazine for that,” -George Carlin.

Why short?

cousky — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 05:11:03 +0000

I do soccer broadcasts over the internet so I know all too well this whole deal about short v. long. In my case it’s somewhat twofold. First, a 45-minute half, as soccer halves tend to last, translate into gigantic files which take forever to load up. And then take forever to listen to.

Which I think is one of the keys, from a user’s point of view of the prevalence of short in detriment of long. In my experience a particularlong file may be the most entertaining thing ever, but if it takes a darn long while to load up, I might not really put up with the wait time. This isn’t always the case. Hulu does a pretty neat job of loading up entire episodes of the Tonight Show within seconds.

However, what makes me wonder is whether the fact that these folks are looking for full episodes of this show or that show makes them more devoted fans of the thing, and hence more willing to put up with the wait, if there was one. I know of many instances where waiting for the little circle of dots to do its thing on YouTube has caused me to go the “Oh, screw this” route and find some other way to waste time.

Attention span is also a factor. There’s a reason why screens on TV are rarely bare anymore. From the ticker on Sportscenter to the ridiculous busyness of Headline News’ shots, people want as much as possible in as little time as possible. I don’t regularly watch evening news anymore (for reasons that would take a while to explain, and which have little to do with the news business itself) but I doubt there’s the inclination to do an editorial the way the late Mr. Cronkite used to do them, expounding on a subject. Usually, the emphasis now, particularly in news show commercials is on “look how fast we can tell you all this stuff.”

Cost also has to have something to do with it. It may be cheaper to do something short. I am not going to expound much on this because I’m just going out on a limb on that one.

This talk about long v. short brought to mind something that happened to me a week ago. I watched Citizen Kane the other day and my wife said “One hour and 59 minutes? That is long!” before popping the disc in.

The last movie she watched before that was “Bolt,” which was 23 minutes shorter. The movie before that was two minutes longer than Citizen Kane.