Clay Shirky’s 2008 book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” is not a book – it’s a love letter, a tome to the power of social media (albeit a far and balanced one). Subsequently, the following “review” (for lack of a better word) is a love letter in return, from me to Shirky. (more…)
Archive for the ‘reading reflections’ Category
Post-class Reflection: Economics 101, courtesy of Monday Night Football, Chris Anderson, and Mickey Mouse
Friday, October 30th, 2009
I’ll explain what this image is about momentarily, but first, let me begin with a prologue. Tuesday night in my Net Economics course at the UW MCDM a lively debate, to say the least, was had over Chris Anderson’s new book “Free”; whether free as a concept was good or bad. I took the free side, but it made me feel a little lonely. I almost felt like I was the only student in the room who believed that it’s a good thing that we’re moving towards a digital economy based on giving bits away, harnessing business models that find alternative sources of revenue. For instance, a fellow student mentioned that Microsoft has a 90% market share of netbook operating systems, a testament to the strength of their software, no doubt. However, I posited that if MSFT went the Anderson route and gave their OS away for free they could have a 100% market share. I’m not going to say what the reaction to that was, but considering our proximity to Redmond and the makeup of the class, which includes Microsoft employees, you can take a wild guess…
Anderson’s “Free” starts out by giving us a quick economics briefing, using that as backdrop to defend the notion of ‘free’. He explains that, for instance, traditional, or old media has used a third-party advertising model to earn revenue while still providing a “free” product. I may not pay for 30 Rock, but when I buy products advertised during commercial breaks on TV or in interstitials on Hulu, I am still giving my money to NBC. It’s pretty basic and has worked for Google, a benevolent empire that has largely amassed their wealth through selling advertising and diversifying revenue streams. Of course, the model isn’t absolutely identical – the web magnifies things by presenting opportunities to apply wisdom gleaned from specific metrics and target users with relevant advertising, as well as ways of satisfying niches with long tail services – but the principle is the same: subsidize one product (free content) with money made from another (paid ad space). Multiply and diversify.
With the notion of one product funding the other in mind, I further illustrate the point by explaining how I helped inadvertently save ABC, Monday Night Football, and the Disney company in 2004. Maybe. Or not. But keep reading! I think you’ll enjoy the reasoning anyways!
Book Review: Chris Anderson’s “Free, The Future of a Radical Price”
Monday, October 26th, 2009…and it could be yours, absolutely free!
“Free,” the latest book by Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” and editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, illustrates how the 21st century’s digital economy of ones and zeros is increasingly moving towards a pricing model where everything is (or should be), essentially, free (Anderson, 2009). Another way of putting it is thus: whereas the marginal cost of reproducing intangible digital goods made of bits instead of atoms is practically zero, whereas Moore’s law and other concepts dictate that the cost of processors, bandwidth, and storage are marching towards nil, and whereas less typical motives for doing business like gaining reputation and raising social capital are on the rise, the very notion that one should pay for digital goods and services is pretty much dead at the door. Anecdotally, for a US economy that is for all intents and purposes steeped in never-ending debt, built on the foundations of imaginary money no less, the irony is not lost upon myself that we really ought not to be paying for anything anyways! Nonetheless, money is scarce, but the resource of intellectual property is endless. “Free” addresses what to do about this, and how real money can be made by giving everything away.
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Learning goals for Net Economics
Friday, October 9th, 2009This quarter in the MCDM at the University of Washington (my final quarter, w00t!), I am taking a course entitled “Economics of Digital Communication”. During introductions in the class I rightly indicated that I am only in the class because it is one of the two being offered this quarter that I had not yet taken. I don’t know anything about economics, and I am not certain it’s a field that is of any interest to me. However, after one night of class and doing some reading for my other course, also related to economics, I am beginning to feel much more interest. I am realizing that economics is actually a realm expressly critical to everything we do, because there is a dollar sign attached to everything in the universe, or so it seems.
This isn’t at all to say I know absolutely nothing about technology and business, if not specifically economics. I know plenty about innovation, incumbents, disruptors, and so forth. But, now I need to learn about the Information Economy. And, gladly, our instructor has been going over the basics of economics already, so I feel I won’t be utterly lost in this course.
Discussion: The Future is 1337
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009Reading reflections: The ethics of the future
Saturday, February 21st, 2009Monty Python cartoon: Television is Bad for Your Eyes
Why is technology always viewed so negatively? And why is the future always bleak? Why does it feel like the future-thinking theorists and prognosticators of the late 20th century as well as the present day always seem to be pointing out how present technoproblems automatically mean future pains?
Reading reflections: Innovations and Disruptive Technologies
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Question 1 – In chapter 26 of Everett Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, Rogers discusses the concept of re-inventing innovations, arguing that designers have classically frowned upon re-invention because it presents challenges to measuring the implementation of their innovations. Considering the constant rate of turnover on-line, including the very way metrics measurement and analysis persistently evolves, why should today’s innovators embrace re-invention?
Reading Reflections: The telephone, recorded sound, semiconductors, and the interesting paths of invention and diffusion – plus predicting the future in 1945!
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009Yes, that’s a long title, but I have so much to talk about! This week’s readings for my Evolutions and Trends in Digital Media course covered myriad subjects, but I have been able to draw out some common ideas and will assiduously attempt to tie them all together here. We students were asked to take a look at some more of Brian Winston’s book, Media, Technology, and Society, on the subject of the telephone and recorded sound, as well as Clay Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next, regarding the semiconductor, and lastly, Vannevar Bush’s prophetic 1945 treatise “As We May Think“, which rightly predicted the era of the computer. I will somehow connect these works together and bring them all back to the subject of communication in general. Wish me luck!
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