pick a race you can win.

Steve Rubel makes a great point today at MicroPersuasion, which got me thinking about something.

I dream of running a campaign where the information is released free-for-all, with interested parties (whether they be print journalists, bloggers, or simply interested people) have access to the same information, at the same time.

I will not get to do this any time soon, because it would massacre the potential for coverage in many major traditional media outlets.  The most important things I can offer to journalists I've worked with are relevance, accuracy and access, but while these are essential, they lack the pure excitement that getting something first, or something exclusively, can generate.

This is a really bad call on the part of everyone involved.

Social media means information is faster than journalism.  When someone was shot on the subway system, I heard about it through Twitter, several minutes before there had been anything authoritative on television or online about it.  It's the same logic as an album leak - if information exists, it will be shared first through unofficial channels.

This happens, because journalists are, and should be, held to a higher standard than anyone else sharing information.  Being better at times means being slower.  If you're researching, fact-checking, and carefully crafting a balanced article that deals with all aspects of a problem, the value isn't in doing it first.

The value of good journalism is doing it BETTER than the layman.  Not sooner.  Insisting that first is genuinely important encourages the audience to forget that.

Newspapers, television, magazines and radio aren't fast enough to win on speed without hampering the flow of information, or sacrificing quality.  But they've proven the value of careful, skillful investigation and exploration an innumerable number of times.

There was a time when daily was fast enough to be the source of new.  That time has passed, and we should adapt.

keep the broadcast model for a broadcast medium.

There are limitations to how many people you can read about, learn about, and conduct conversations with.

If you are willing to deal with a fragmented, less social experience, you can increase that number, with drawbacks occurring as the number of people you intend to interact with increases.

  

At some point, you will no longer be able to respond to every question or comment directed at you.  At a later point, you will no longer be able to read every question or comment directed at you.  

After a certain level of growth, you will no longer be able to read enough of the volume of comments or questions to build an understanding of the individuals you are attempting to interact with - you may recognise names, but be unable to have a profile of the person filed away in your head.

At a final point, you will no longer be able to recognise the sub-groups, factions or cliques, within your following.  You will merely have a mass of people who have offered to give you their attention.  This is massively powerful, but it's not the same as building a lasting social interaction with someone (or several someones).

We have platforms that work well for mass non-social outreach.  Broadcast media, and the broadcast model, do this absurdly well, and features such as confining a message of this type to a certain object, or a certain time, help to build a community experience despite the disconnected nature of the messaging.

Why do I keep seeing experts try to use social media for the broadcast model of communication?  Ten thousand people fighting to speak with you via Twitter and being ignored isn't better than the same ten thousand getting a video podcast or one-way mailing list - it's worse, because Twitter comes with an expectation of conversation.

Ignoring the realities of the form, and thinking that more is better in a medium that is optimized for, and defined by social interaction, doesn't help anyone.

I'm not trying to discourage celebrities, thought-leaders, and experts from interacting with social media.  I'm just arguing that they aren't experiencing social media, because social media is about developing conversations and connections that don't play well with fame.

Play to the strengths of the medium.  Or find a medium that plays well with your strengths.

journalism is the harbinger (or, say goodbye to sleep).

One of the attempted fixes the newsmedia has tried to bolster profits and smooth the transition online, is to basically to work journalists to death.  On top of the many, many facets of the actual job, the research, the interviews, the investigations and the writing, some journalists are expected to maintain a blog, create smaller pieces for websites, and generally add another separate job's workload to their day.

This is going to happen to all of us.

In a society where social media is well and truly mainstream, where transparency is a given, and where each individual within a company is seen as a potential representative, lots of people are going to find a social media element added to their duties.  Posting on a corporate blog, or updated a company focused next-generation equivalent of a twitter account, or flickr, or facebook page, is going to become a standard part of everyone's workday.  There will be a point where a lack of 'humanizing content' on behalf of a company or representative will seem as odd as meeting someone who refuses to use contractions.

The issue is, maintaining a meaningful social media presence is a lot of work.  Many of us are busy enough that we don't really know how to fit everything into a work day already.  I'm lucky enough to have a job where my use of social media on the job is accepted (and quickly becoming industry standard).

We should all get ready for the double shift.  It's coming.  And for the people who wouldn't be doing it anyways, it's going to be uncomfortable.

idealistic communications rant.

Communication is about new ways of talking.

Communication is NOT about old ways of talking on new platforms.

This is an important difference, and a common mistake.

Twitter ≠ RSS.  Don’t use it exclusively for linking to your blog.

Blogging ≠ Infomercial.  Strategic ‘authenticity’ is still inauthentic.

New ways of talking create problems.  The first instinct for both writer and reader, is to apply the standards of old ways of talking, or to ignore the lessons of old ways of talking completely.

Writing emails as formal letters is an example of the former.  Ignoring the freedoms we have for sampling and remixing text when developing limitations of creative freedoms with video or audio is an example of the latter.  Both, upon reflection, don’t make a lot of sense.

New ways of talking mean new rules of talking, but they don’t necessarily mean the lessons of older modes of communication should be ignored.  If we’re using English, a beautiful phrase will likely still read as a beautiful phrase.

Phrases can have beauty online, as much as they can in a novel.  There can be art and underlying meaning to communication anywhere, if we decide not to drown it in shit.

[inspired from a lot of places, more recently Lawrence Lessig's Remix, which is very much worth reading.]

information distribution: pr as arg.

Getting back to the concept that started 2009 for the blog, I've been looking at NOTCOT's recent posts related to the promotion for Coraline.

I'm convinced the future of the press kit is creating an experience that appeals to both press and the general community, and then allowing both groups to create a dialogue that further explores the related product or event.

Some people (usually not working in PR) would like to pretend that the mainstream media will stop being essential at some point in the future.  I think the value of our industry, moving forward, is creating opportunities for the community to interact with and influence the mainstream media.  For the public to relate to the story, the public has to relate to the people telling it.  Why not put them on the same team?

Looking at these Coraline 'boxes' I imagine sending something similar out, in a slightly different way.  Imagine sending 50 boxes, out of order, to media outlets - and then another 100 or 200 out to individuals who has expressed an interest in the film, whether through subscribing for updates to the website, or participating in a contest for free tickets.

The media outlets with a broad reach would act as a teaser.  They could create interest in the campaign as a whole, and a starting point for those involved.  The packages would clearly need to contain actual information about the product, and further interviews, information, etc, would need to be made available to satisfy the requirements most journalists have, information-wise.  As well, the assumption has to be made that journalists would (and should) break the fourth wall.  That said, the presentation of information informs how it is discussed (the medium is the message, etc).

The story (from a journalistic standpoint) is part of the story (from a narrative standpoint).

Individuals seeded with the similar press packages would interact with news stories on a standard level, but hopefully also as a presentation of information that would help them navigate the wider narrative of the campaign.  Similar things are happening now, mostly using websites and blogs as a means of reaching media while maintaining a narrative.

I guess the dream is a fully integrated promotional strategy that is part of, and an expansion on, the core narrative.  Trailers, commercials, print advertisements, release schedules, public appearances - all of these could be used to further the narrative, as well as to create audience interest.  Media relations strategy could easily be a part of the overall narrative, rather than just the promotional one, and therefore part of the community generated narrative.

Of course, this is all vague, and reads (and is written) more like a plea to consider things differently than a directive.  I'm okay with that, and I hope you are too.

oppositional proof-reading.

Walking to work today I saw a Tim Horton's billboard that got me thinking.

The ad consists of the Tim's logo, a full pot of coffee with the time '10:27' written on it, and handwriting-style text to the tune of 'this pot of coffee has 20 minutes to live'.  Simple, fairly easy to understand - they are letting you know that any coffee you buy at Timmy Ho's will be no more than 20 minutes old.

However, my immediate thought was 1) 'What an absurd waste of coffee', and 2) 'I wonder how much energy that wastes?'

Clearly, this wasn't the reading that the creators of the ad intended.  And it was easy to see the meaning they had intended the ad to create.  But at the same time, I have to wonder if I wouldn't do better work if I looked at every sentence I wrote, and considered the knee-jerk oppositional readings that are most likely, when I created it.

All any of us can do is create something, and make it available to others.  At that point, we lose control over meaning.  If I can make it even slightly harder to find a point of disagreement with what I create, it's probably worth it.  I do this to a certain extent already, but I'm going to endeavour to make it a more standard part of my creative process / workflow.

eyeballs are screen agnostic (monetizing p2p television).

I'm consistently baffled about why pirating TV online is an issue.  Let's look at this logically:

1. TV is paid for (in part) with advertising sales.
2. Advertising is a matter of eyeballs, and metrics.  The number of people watching, and other demographic info, determines the price of advertising time, with past results dictating future pricing.
3. Piracy is fast, wide distribution, usually at no cost to the uploader of content.
4. The simplest option, with the minimum intrusiveness, usually wins.

If those four things are true (and I believe they are), I will never understand why television programs aren't distributed online, at time of broadcast, from the networks that broadcast them traditionally.

Eyeballs are eyeballs regardless of what screen they are focused on.  Whether I'm watching a show on a TV, a monitor, or an iPod, I'm still watching.  When I watch a program on my iPod, it normally doesn't have commercials; but only because I'm either paying for it, or it has been uploaded without commercials.  

If the first place to get a TV show I wanted to watch was from the broadcasting network, with commercials, I would get it there.  No questions asked.  Because the time saved in downloading something at 8pm from NBC rather than at 11pm from EZTV is worth a few minutes of commercials to me.  I would wager it would be the same way for others, provided the download was in an open format, with no copy protection.  This would be a product that competes with piracy, using the tools the content owners actually have: initial release date (usually), and best quality (almost always).

The interesting thing, is that there is a potential for a wider market of advertisers.  If google analytics can tell me which country my readers are coming from, it can probably tell CBS which country a visitor is trying to download How I Met Your Mother from.  Why can't there be dozens of versions of each show, each with localized commercials in the same break period?  Why can't online distribution mean that the same ad space can be sold to different companies in Canada, the US, and Uruguay?  It happens when signals are rebroadcast over TV, why not do the same online.

Instead of complaining about the internet stealing eyeballs, why not sell access to those eyeballs too?  Why not do the whole thing via bittorrent, at next to no cost?  Why not use the torrent download information from each localized version, and use that to justify ad prices?

The short version of why is because you're leaving money on the table, and because you won't stop piracy unless you give customers a better product than piracy does.  If you want to keep selling high quality versions without commercials, there will still be customers.  People will always be willing to pay for a premium version, or for a physical copy (DVD).  Monetizing content online can't be based on the idea that you can change behaviour, only that you can create a system that isolates value in that behaviour.  So get on it, despite the complications of clearing content in different countries.

Because the shortest version of 'Why?' is a desperate need to stay relevant.

[To point out: 1) Yes, I am aware that people can skip past ads in downloaded content.  They can also leave the room to get a drink, and often do.  No one uses this as an excuse to stop advertising on TV.  2) People could just burn DVD copies of the torrented shows.  People already do.  Buying a DVD is usually about convenience, quality, love of the content and special features.  3) There are probably technological issues with this.  I understand that, and this is why there are people smarter than me to make it work regardless.]

i don't do press, i do narratives.

I've loved narrative for as long as I can remember.  I used to drive my mother crazy because I would read rather than do anything else.  Until I was 22 or so, my only career aspiration was novelist.

Narratives are the most important thing in getting attention, interest, audiences and markets.

I was never the kind of writer who planned everything out.  I developed my characters, a situation, some undefined ideas, and went to it.  Writing was a process of discovery.  I can't do that anymore.

PR isn't just about arranging press coverage.  It's about developing a narrative, and exploring and expanding it through the media.  This is a hell of a lot more complicated, because you need to plan around the unexpected actions of others, the trends that dominate the marketplace, upcoming changes in those trends, the personalities of your stakeholders, the tangents that drive away from the actual narrative, and, of course, the truth (which is essential, immutable and unavoidable).

I'm spending a lot of time crafting, developing, and planning the narratives I manage and create now.  It's very rewarding, in a very similar way to how writing fiction was.  If anything, it feels like a particularly complex version of the same, but rooted in truth and the real world.

Because your brand, your narrative, is no longer up to you in the post-internet world.  All you can do is create the set of concepts, framing, ideas and narrative that best defines your product and goals, while planning around the nearly limitless number of things the newly infinite citizen media can do with it.

It would be terrifying if it wasn't so much fun.

looking to the future.

As a Black person, as a person of mixed race, as someone who believes that we as humanity can do better, it makes me happy, proud, and hopeful to say that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States.

We all know that this campaign was unprecedented in terms of social media application, use of newer communications media to organize and bolster support, and clean design and pitch perfect marketing.

I'm calling it now - every other president in recent memory has gone on the lecture circuit talking about leadership, or entered the military industrial complex, or oil business, as a high powered executive taking advantage of his connections - Barack Obama will leave office (hopefully in 8 years) and be reached out to for his ability to craft a compelling message, build his own tribe out of a disparate people, and market himself, his product better than anyone in living memory.

For his next trick, living up to the hype.  Best of luck, President-Elect Obama.

the shock doctrine.

First, the capsule review: the book is damn good, changed my opinion on Naomi Klein, and is highly recommended to anyone who wants to better understand the dangers of ideology being more important than evidence.  Go read it, and talk to your friends about how screwed up unregulated (or fundamentalist) capitalism is.

Now, what I actually learned from the book.  I've detested Klein's previous work.  No Logo bothered me for a lot of reasons, mostly the idea that there was something wrong with powerful, recognizable brands that resonated with large swathes of society, and influenced behaviour on a global scale.  If the point of the book had been that mis-using this power is wrong, it would have been obvious, laughed at, and unpublished.  By pretending that the danger somehow came from brands itself, it was edgy and revolutionary.  To most people, at least.

The Shock Doctrine however, attacks a specific brand of capitalism, and a specific type of behaviour.  The dangers of unregulated, unchecked behaviour is a reasonable target by any measure.  The book isn't an attack on capitalism in general (Libertarians may disagree), but an attack on an extreme form.  Most importantly, incontrast to Klein's earlier work, I could actually empathize with the victims.  Foreign economies that have been ruined by the greed of intervening governments are very different than disaffected upper middle class children protesting against the companies that employ their parents.

If you are going to condemn something, put together a narrative that shows you understand your target, the victims, and the reality of the situation.  Don't just decide that an entire branch of thinking or strategy is somehow evil, regardless of application or intent.  You have to creat a narrative that supports your opinions, whether in a book, or in a campaign.

To disregard unfairly is to be disregarded summarily.

[I'm still amused at how many of the people I know who read 'No Logo' did so because it was part of their Marketing / Advertising course readings in University or College.]

words to live by.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

In my opinion this quote very clearly explains the shifting stages in power dynamics, and the messaging that changes between large and small companies.  Which is why I've been applying it constantly, without realizing, to far too many conversations I've been having.

The important thing isn't applying this to yourself only when you are the little guy.  The truly important thing is to remember the dominant role in the story - if you can continue indefinitely against a competitor, either ignoring them or laughing at them, you are probably in good shape.  However, a competitior only gains status when you decide to start fighting them.  Don't give them the opportunity to win.

Keep laughing.

social media still needs the broadcast model.

It all comes from somewhere.  People want buzz in social media, and generally they think the obvious solution is to 'go Viral', as though this is something predictable or simple to replicate.  Social media is supposed to bread the broadcast model, but what we keep forgetting is that social media, in the large scale sense that communications pros and companies want, is based on the broadcast model.

The big blogs are either original works or commentary.  They disseminate to smaller blogs, and to sites like Digg and Reddit, generally the same way Newspapers would disseminate into real world conversations.  Many of the things that become comment peices are linkblogged from larger, more established sources.  Sure, the timing is faster, but it works the same as it always did - sources with the biggest audience generally trickle down into the sources with smaller audiences.

There are major differences and advantages in the results - blog and Digg coverage results in a fast online paper trail, google results, more impressions, etc.  For the reader, trickling down into blogs results in stories being approached from more varied and specific viewpoints.  But, if you want blog coverage, if you want social media relevance, the major ingredient beyond having a topic that is relevant to social media, is targeting and getting covered by the big boys.

This is what amuses me to no end about being told, constantly, that PR is dead, is useless, is irrelevant.  Half the time someone will say this, and within a week, link a story from the New York Times, or Marketing Magazine, or Fast Company, or a youtube clip from MSNBC.  Cognitive dissonance is an odd thing to watch writ large.

Social media has changed the game, certainly.  And approaching large entities online that operate on the broadcast model is not the same as contacting traditional media outlets.  But assuming that things that reach the largest number of people are less important at a time when things are breaking down into smaller, more specific conversations forgets the key element of having a topic.

And topics come from shared experience.

in (further) defense of public relations.

The Long Version:

Newsmedia, and Journalism, isn't the paragon of ethics it pretends to be. This massive concentration of power is in the hands of business interests, like anything else. Journalists are influential, intelligent, and often have an agenda, whether based on personal opinions or editorial mandate. A careful twisting of an off the cuff statement has the potential to do massive damage to a reputation and business, without necessarily crossing the boundaries of libel or slander. PR has an image problem. PR has a lot of catching up to do with developing media, and the changing way people get information. PR will be necessary as long as there is a concentration of influence among media outlets that may be biased, because individuals will always try to protect their personal interests, including their image.

The Short Version:

Everyone thinks the world would be better without Lawyers, too, until they actually consider what the law would look like without individual representatives.

crowley's second rule.

I’m proposing the following social media uncertainty principle:

At the moment you are unable to respond personally to the volume of comments and emails generated by your commentary on social media, you are no longer participating in social media.

This came to mind when I read a recent post talking about how great twitter is as a research tool, that simply asking one’s list for recommendations is far more useful than checking a site dedicated to the topic. This is certainly true, for a comparatively small number of pundits. But if you can do that, you aren’t really using social media. You’re being famous on a platform designed for the ‘Famous for 15 People’ world of augmented social interaction. And really, this level of internet fame makes it impossible to really comment on how social media works.

You can’t tell me how twitter, or tumblr, or even blogger works when you’re using it in a way 99% of people will never use it. You aren’t talking about how social media works. You’re talking about being internet famous. And as wise and informed as your perspective may be, it’s not a perspective that benefits most users.

So, the short version is, fame breaks social media. It alters the experience to the point where it’s unrecognizable, and often, breaks it so completely that the internet famous individual gets sick of the vitriol thrown their way and gives up.

You can’t comment on social media without experiencing it. And often, I find the social media punditry crowd is really just talking about personal publishing. It would help me, I think, if I thought they realized it.

time and space bias, dead and dying

chartreuse examines time bias, or more bluntly, declares time dead.

I agree, but was kinda hoping this much was obvious by now. Then again, watching most media outlets makes it clear that obvious doesn't really mean a change in operations. I'm more interested in space bias - and the idea that most content owners have, that owning something in one form, shouldn't justify ownership in several formats, each suited to a location (meaning, a device, a file format, and a set of permissions and interactions tooled to that medium).

Time bias is more or less dead, and all it took was storage, compression and bandwidth. Space bias falling apart will be more of a cultural shift, and an eventual understanding that consumers are only willing to pay for something useful. Useful, very soon, is going to be defined as unilaterally useful. In other words, people might be willing to spent 15 bucks for an album again if it means they can get a physical copy, get a digital copy, and get enough context with it that the experience is tailored to each tool they use to enjoy it, from ipod to computer to car.

the newspaper i want to read.

I was talking with a friend who is just finishing her education in journalism, and about to enter the workforce. In the midst of one of those conversations that are universal among my generation, the 'I don't know where my industry / career / aspirations will fit in the everchanging landscape'. I told her, and still think, that there will always be a market for trained investigative journalists, mostly because they can do a story justice in a way most bloggers often can't.

I do, however, think that the newspaper is more or less dead in the water, and the magazine (in terms of news, not niche interests) is in a similar, though less drastic, situation.

The newspaper I would operate, on a base level, like a blog network. Individual blogs, run by trained journalists, covering one specific beat. Stories could be reported in full, or as they develop, but each beat would have a distinct voice, and the overarching narrative that can be established by having the same person covering the same issues over time.

Mix this with a solid amount of professional oversight, and it could be curated into a standard daily paper, and more than that, into tailored subscription papers, online or in print, that would only include selected beats, or writers, or even tags. Obviously, this would be available online as it happened, because speed is the other major advantage that blogging has over traditional outlets.

Depressingly, the idea of a voice, or author narrative coming through for current newspapers is more likely to mean a columnist that completely ignores the concept of critical distance from the story (paging Rosie DiManno) than it is to give each beat a character.

This isn't a well defined concept. But I think the current approach taken by newspapers to maintain an online presence that mixes the failings of blogs, with incompleteness when compared to the print edition, is doomed.

If someone would print me a one section version of the Globe and Mail, written by only people I respect, and containing only stuff I care about, I'd be willing to subscribe just for convenience. This is, of course, related to my obsession with print on demand.

democratic panopticon

[This is a work in progress, and it will be either heavily edited (when I am less sleepy), or re-written and re-posted (possibly with better defined arguments). Let's just consider this one workshopping online.]

This post is heavily thematically linked with a previous one, titled Paparazzi Panopticism.

Thing one: Warren Ellis' Crooked Little Vein includes a character who discusses the idea of cellular phones with cameras as a weapon. Any they are, because it allows anyone to create content, news content, information content, disruptive content. If you want the speech, buy the book. Seriously. It's brilliant.

Thing two: My father, who has, over the years, gone from the kind of guy who buys a 286 and convinces his wife that it's good for the kids (which it shockingly was), to the kind of guy who dislikes that blogging gives anyone a platform to say anything, made a compelling comment over dinner. That a world where people have cell phone cameras is a world where corruption is harder to get away with.

These things got me thinking. The effect of everyone being about to record anything isn't the us vs them issue that so many people think it is. The Panoptic reality this creates isn't binary, there is a more complex dynamic than authority vs people. What we're left with instead is a democratised panopticon, where interpretation and evidence can come from all sides, and from all agendas.

The intriguing part of this, for me, is the subversion of the original theory. Panoptic realities are about people policing themselves in fear of an authority who may or may not be watching at any given time. But the current situation isn't just about authority. Now there is reasonable need to fear that any action that would offend a reasonably sized community will be shown, and you will be penalized socially for it, by that group, and groups affiliated.

To put it simply, this isn't just about being caught standing against the whims of authority, now. It's about the possibility of being caught, at any time, for any act deemed against society, or even peace in society. This is more involved than fighting authority, for one simple reason - a democratised panopticon is inescapable.

In terms of fighting authority, it's marvelous that someone can't be tasered needlessly without it being caught on film. Authorities should be held responsible for their actions, because they have power. The same can be said for celebrities, which justifies, to an extent, the concept of the paparazzi panopticon. But a democratic panopticon seems to bring with it a need to better define the limitations of acceptable behaviour, of what acts, statements or opinions are anti-social in a strong enough sense to require response.

Or will the standard reply be something to the tune of 'live like no one's watching'?

yeah, the respected ones never lie.

I'm not going to read Keen's Cult of the Amateur. There are a lot of potential excuses I could use here, but the pertinent ones are that a) the basic premise is so wrong I can rarely make it through skimming an article covering the book, and b) I'm to busy to waste that time.

This comes up because two rather new pairs of jeans have been stained. not just like, regular use dirt stained, but (through different circumstances) the kind of stains that require effort. After struggling to get grease out (and potentially trashing the pants), I googled it. The experience was worth noting, because my normal pattern for searching for how-to's relates mostly to techy stuff. The most recent example of this was the attempt to get non-DRM ringtones to play on my Nokia 6300; it didn't go well.

Searching for stain removal tips was painless. I typed in grease stain, and clicked on the least spammy looking result. Quick, painless. The interface of the page was hideous, it wasn't supremely functional, but I got the advice I wanted. all sounds good to me.

I thought later, in the shower, how one of Keen's points (as far as I understand) is that the internet and it's ability to give equal access and weight to amateurs will result in a technocracy, where only the internet savvy will be able to find access to the good content. Well, looking for technology related stuff, people who are somewhere in-between in terms of tech savvy (I'm theory, not practice), need to parse dialogue they may not natively understand, and usually accept the need to dig through a lot of 'I know guy, MSFT suxx0rs' when trying to find drivers for an old scanner.

The internet is filled with information put forth by amateurs, and, unshockingly, the most accessible information in terms of content is usually the most accessible information in terms of accessibility.

The assumption that one needs to be tech savvy to get useful content via an internet connection has to come from someone who is either somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of the internet (such as my mother) or someone who forgets that anything needs a skill set to use it -- reading everything in the NYT as though it was gospel is just as stupid as reading everything online without suspicion -- and the assumption that less modern media are somehow easier to use forgets that the technology in play was not always invisible.

The cult of the amateur is another little thing in this society; at time we refer to it as democracy. Everyone gets an opinion, everyone has a RIGHT to that opinion, and each individual needs to decide for themselves. We go with the will of the crowd from time to time. What's enshrining old media as the high point in cultural representation is the exact thing that's presenting the internet as a better way.

If you're afraid that too many individual voices will drown out the 'respectable' ones, than the question is more about the power and validity of that assumed credible source, rather than an invading, more popular option.

paparazzi panopticism.

Communication Theory 101: Foucault and the Panopticon. The general idea, skipping past the actual specifics and the path to the point, is that people who know they may be watched, without being certain WHEN they are watched, police themselves.

This is, at core, the major principle behind law enforcement. Punishment is an issue of deterrent, rather than justice. In short, we don’t commit crimes not only because it would be wrong to do so, but out of fear of getting caught.

Enter the modern era’s obsession with celebrity personal lives.

I was watching Lionel Ritchie on CBC’s The Hour, and one of the questions he was asked was whether or not his daughter, Nicole of Simple Life and drunk driving fame, was ‘okay’.

His answer is irrelevant.

The point of Foucault’s ideas was that people policing themselves, a society that polices itself, is the end result of a watched society. If you look at any one of the pre-eminent gossip blogs, you’ll see that the exact opposite is in effect,

When Britney, or Paris, or Lindsay finally accepted that privacy no longer existed for them, that paparazzi were ALWAYS watching, whether or not they could see them, they had to make a choice. It was either to live their entire lives as though the entire world was watching (because, most of the time, it was) or to live as though no one was watching at all.

So we get upskirt shots as they come out of limos, and celebrity sextapes, photographic evidence of idiotic behaviour, whether neglecting the safety of a child, or neglecting standards of decency.

Foucault, apparently, was wrong. When faced with a panoptic reality, societal norms aren’t reinforced; they’re demolished. This is the same reason constant surveillance is the hallmark of an unjust state – if watched closely enough, everyone is a criminal, is a failure, an embarrassment. Ergo, if you’re equally despised whether you do something small wrong, or live like a hedonist hero, you might as well have the fun.

The interesting thing about this is that it can be read one of two ways; either they have decided to own up to their behaviour, radical transparency style, and not care what people say, or they’ve simply decided that any behaviour will be derided, so why bother behaving.

In no way am I excusing the current rash of drunk driving celebutantes. I’m just looking at the impact this has on theory, because everyone else just seems to focus on the decision to either mock or pity them.

relationships and mobile media.

I am an avid text messager. I use my phone to send and take images, track my time, and give little reminders to those I care about. I don't have a smart phone, or one with any remotely impressive PDA capabilities, I use a somewhat outdated Sony Ericsson model that fulfills my needs of very long battery life and good reception better than I have come to expect from portable telephony. I had a cell phone for almost 2 years before I used any of these things, despite them being available to me. And, I think, the deciding factor for me to begin using the cell phone as more than just a last minute communications tool (as in, 'change of plans, to another coffee house') was entering into a serious relationship.

I went, in the space of a few months, from being completely against the concept of text messaging, to being the kind of person who sends a few a day. My original stance on the issue was something to the tune of 'why would I pay ten cents to send a five word email I typed with my thumbs?' This is still, when I think about it, a reasonable position. I think, more than the introduction of a girlfriend into my life, this was a matter of my relationship with the telephone in general changing greatly due to the introduction of said girlfriend.

Let me explain; to the average single male, a telephone call need not last more than 45 seconds, unless one is talking to a family member. At that point in my life, most of the phone calls I made were about who was picking up whom, where we were going, what movie we were seeing, etc. Now that I had a significant other, I was actually having conversations on the phone. About how my day was, how hers was, making plans for the next few times we would see each other, and yes, sometimes just sitting and enjoying a mutual silence for exorbitant fees. This is, I would assume, a very common occurrence in young men, that entering a relationship is the point at which one makes phone calls for more than the sake of organisation.

The difference is, the telephone is no longer just used for voice conversation. So instead of changing the way I used a single technology, entering a relationship recontextualised SMS messages, sending digital stills, and other pocket technology minutiae, such as the use of a picture of my significant other for my phone background.

I changed my phone number today, and sent a message to some of my friends with the details. And I realised that I never would have done that, if my relationship to that technology hadn't expanded with my relationship to the phone, which in turn expanded due to my relationship with a certain girl.

And that, is my mostly sappy post for the day.