public communication

Tiger Woods, No Logo and the impossible existence of the branded-human/human-as-brand

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 07:14:52 +0000

A few Saturdays ago, the Toronto Star ran an article on whether or not No Logo remains relevant. The article dwelled on the anti-globalization movement of the early nineties, the ascent of which is often misattributed to the book, and liberal misinterpretations of the book and Klein’s thesis, rather considering what the book is actually about — the branding of everything.

In particular, the book frequently returns to Michael Jordan as the prototypical branded human/human brand —an individual who is both adorned and associated with brands, and who is themselves a brand. Michael Jordan is history, and Tiger Woods is now the sportsman of measure.

I don’t recall Klein entering into a discussion of it, but this branded-brand success brings with it serious ontological implications. In abstract, a brand is little more than a symbol imbued with some fabricated meaning, and this meaning is associated to an otherwise ordinary, meaningless, product. For instance, as Klein goes on in the first few pages of the book, the Quaker Oats man gives plain old rolled oats a certain pastoral sentiment. Culture jammers can do what they wish to this image to harm it, but the Quaker Oats man does not need to worry about harming his “image,” because “he” is just a symbol.

The branded-brand human is not so fortunate, because they are both privately volitional and publicly symbolic. The branded-brand human cannot totally maintain a division between their individual self and they symbol that they have become, must struggle to stay autonomous whilst upholding the integrity of the brands that are affixed upon their brand, as well as their own brand. When the volitional human of the symbol “screws up,” all associated brands take a hit.

When hack journalists report on whether or not golf and Nike will suffer because Tiger had to get his woodsie, they’re talking about the idea of the branded human. So yes, No Logo is still relevant.

Lawsuit Seeks Information on How Government Uses Social-Networking Sites

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 23:03:55 +0000

Lawsuit Seeks Information on How Government Uses Social-Networking Sites:

tsparks:

From: securitymanagement.com
By Matthew Harwood
12/02/2009 -

A prominent hi-tech civil liberties organization filed suit in federal court yesterday to impel a half-dozen government agencies to disclose the policies and procedures that govern how they access, collect, and store information from social networking Web sites.

The 8-page lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) “seeks the release of records requested from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice, Department of Treasury, Central Intelligence Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence concerning the use of social-networking websites as investigative, surveillance, and data collection tools.”
Bbr> Read Entire Article

Google's response to Murdoch. First click is free, after that you pay.

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:08:12 +0000

Google's response to Murdoch. First click is free, after that you pay. :

soupsoup:

We love helping publishers make their content available to large groups of readers, and working on ways to make the world’s information useful and accessible through our search results. At the same time, we’re also aware of the fact that creating high-quality content is not easy and, in many cases, expensive. This is one of the reasons why we initially launched First Click Free for Google News and Google Web Search — to allow publishers to sell access to their content in general while still allowing users to find it through our search results.

No names, no links: Writers give themselves a pass and denounce the "information wants to be free" crowd

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:11:45 +0000

jayrosen:

Mark Cuban: Rupert Murdoch to Block Google = Smart

I love to tweak all the internet information must be free bigots. They get so damn religious about information on the net that they lose what little objectivity and awareness of the real world they had in the first place

Bigotry, wherever it’s found, deserves to be called out— say, with a link?

eweek, When Legal Strikes—Chaos Theory Meets DRM

While theres a certain infantile, self-serving view (common among the information-wants-to-be-free crowd) that just about anything one might want to do with others intellectual property is covered by fair use, the law bends pretty effectively to codify what Grant says the majority intuitively knows to be right.

Infantile and self-serving both? Juicy! Got a name?

Jeff Bercovici, Daily Finance

The conventional wisdom on whether and how newspapers ought to charge for their online content is changing so rapidly, some people are having trouble keeping up. One of those people is Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, who Monday repeated one of the favored fallacies of the information-must-be-free crowd: that publications that try to squeeze some cash out of readers, however delicately, risk losing their audiences.

Actually, the crowd Kurtz was talking about is people who won’t patronize pay sites; that’s not a fallacy, it’s just… what they do.

Douglas Rushkoff in the Daily Beast

Discussions between Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for a structure where the former’s search engine (Bing) would pay for exclusive rights to the latter’s content (Wall Street Journal, Fox, etc.) has proven instantly upsetting to the self-appointed defenders of a “free” Internet. The simple reason: it might just work…

Of course, the information-wants-to-be-free troops are already up in arms. Some welcome what they see as the extinction of both evil empires in an ill-conceived death grip that will push Fox News and the Wall Street Journal off the mainstream map. Others see it as a last-gasp effort by “old media” to resist the unstoppable, Google-driven evolution of an entirely free content universe. They see searchability by Google as equivalent to participation in democratic society—and any resistance to offering up one’s content to exploitation by Google Inc. as resistance to the natural openness of interactive media and bottom-up civilization.

Doug: this is the web. You know…hypertext? Can’t we visit the troops ourselves?

Ken Davis, moderator of the Chicago Journalism Town Hall

Eventually even the “information wants to be free” crowd, a little greyer and sobered by mortgages and tuition bills, will come around to, and benefit from, a sane payment methodology.

Do “crowds” grow up? Seems to be what you are saying.

Jason Wilson, newmalitda.com

Some of the people in the “information wants to be free” crowd, who say News can’t do it, make some unwarranted assumptions.

First, they assume that News will only enclose the newpaper content that it currently gives away, and that they will enclose all of it.

Second, they assume that there will always be a free equivalent to anything that News puts behind the wall, meaning that people won’t have any reason to pay for it.

Third, some seem to think that just because they don’t like something, that means there’s no market for it.

Fourth, they assume that no News journalists have skills, expertise or access that might be worth paying for.

And last, there seems to be a belief in some quarters that News Corporation is largely staffed by idiots.

That’s a lot of assumptions, and they sound pretty specific, like you might have read them somewhere…?

Martin Belam, currybet.net

Malcom Coles yesterday wrote a great blog post looking at ways that News International could succeed in monetising their content. I think it addresses a lot of issues and niche content that does exist, that the naysayers of the ‘information wants to be free’ crowd tend to sweep under the carpet as it doesn’t fit with their argument.

Wait: there’s a big crowd of folks who say you can’t charge for niche content? Really?

Michael Becker at Hypercrit: Set the good stuff free and charge for the peas

The title of this post doesn’t make a lot of sense until you read an interesting post by Lucas Grindley, the online managing editor for NationalJournal.com. Grindley’s responding to the revived idea of charging for news content online, an idea that’s stuck in the craw of many “information wants to be free” advocates.

Craw-stuck-upmanship can be fun to observe. May we have a link please?

Scottfox.com, Twitter Gurus Please Stop Whining!

Remember how the first generation of bloggers howled when the 2nd and 3rd generation of bloggers started including advertisements on their blogs? And, even before that, how the “information wants to be free” crowd rebelled against commercialization of the Web? And in the middle 1990’s, Internet purists even objected to the addition of images on web pages!

Well, we all know how that turned out…

Purist gurus howling and whining? Hook us up!

Willing to Pay a Fee for Access to News Articles?

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:23:21 +0000

azplace:

As I’ve been perusing online since the time when the Mosaic browser ruled the web, I continue to be astonished at the recycling of this meme about the tragedy of noble newspaper guardians going extinct at the expense of gluttonous online readers taking for free what print subscribers previously paid fees to receive. Inevitably, the discussion meanders into solution space speculation — typically, after first lambasting newspaper publishing lords for their shortsightedness in adopting an online business mode. From there, subscription pay walls, various micropayment schemes, or clearinghouse outlets like how radio music is licensed to play are proffered forth.

Belied in this assessment however is a false notion that readers were ever (at least in the modern era) the main subsidization of a news organization’s operation. Subscriptions for printed news output delivery were a pittance compared to advertising revenue. But that ad money was tied to mass eyeball share for monolithic news sources. You got world events, local happenings, stock quotes, sports scores, lifestyle features, movie listings, comics, classifieds, horoscopes from that wadded bundle of newsprint left on the doorstep (or plucked from newsstand). Television displayed breaking news video, but if you wanted the deeper story, you read the newspaper or a weekly newsmagazine.

Circa 2009, you get your news from either television or the internet. Or some combination of both. But online, you would point your browser at nfl.com for NFL scores, frequent Google Finance (or Yahoo Finance or whatever your desired flavor) for stock data, tap up movie times on your iPhone NowPlaying app, and shop for a used MacBook Pro on craigslist. Yeah, you might skim local doings posted on your town newspaper’s online presence, but it’s possible you could collect the same sort of information from blogs or twitter friends. Bottom line, your news seeking exercise is blanketed over a dissemination of sources. Meaning that’s a smaller mass of web visitors for the online newspaper site proprietor. Meaning a significantly smaller ad rate with no earthly way to profit from those old school print readers.

With diminished ad fare, readers would have to carry more of the fare in what was already a minority portion. Consequently, to capture web patrons paying for content, subscription rates would have to be set at prohibitive marks. At a level that most readers would be unable or unwilling to pay.

By no means are subscription models an impossible option for all online publishers. Markets exist where there are customers eager to pay premium fees for specialized information. Odds are, however, the price will be considerably greater than the cost of a daily newspaper. And there are some successful models in existence today, churning out profit, and serving their readership, some still funded by advertising, others by a loyal subscriber base.

Nick Montfort about #IPF09

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:11:52 +0000

Nick Montfort about #IPF09:

trebors:

The Internet as Playground and Factory offered a beginning to the important conversation that we (in digital media) have been avoiding. Speakers addressed the lack of explicit political engagement among open source software developers, the different types of labor/work/action seen online, the complexities of labor (why are these Chinese gold farmers spending some of their free time playing the game that they toil at all day?), and other important and often-overlooked issues.

"6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is..."

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:42:19 +0000

“6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.”

- The new rules of news | Dan Gillmor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

how sad that this is in a journalism wishlist.

(via igather)

Tweets from The Internet as Playground and Factory conference

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:39:21 +0000

(via trebors)

"I’m all for your principles. I’m a big fan of The Cluetrain’s “markets are conversations,” notion...."

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:31:49 +0000

“I’m all for your principles. I’m a big fan of The Cluetrain’s “markets are conversations,” notion. But I can promise you a conversation never paid the damn electric bill.”

- Why Social Media purists won’t last [social media explorer] (via puscic)

Knight Foundation Blog » The FTC and Journalism in the Internet Age

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:48:45 +0000

Knight Foundation Blog » The FTC and Journalism in the Internet Age:

shaneguiter:

The Federal Trade Commission released the agenda and speakers for its Dec. 1-2 workshop, “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?”

Up for discussion: how news economics are playing out on the Internet and in print; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the variety of governmental policies – including antitrust, copyright, and tax policy.

"The New York Times did not discover social media with my appointment, and vice versa. For the last..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:58:51 +0000

“The New York Times did not discover social media with my appointment, and vice versa. For the last two years we have had more than a couple hundred accounts on Twitter, and we now have 2 million followers on our main feed. We have half a million fans on Facebook…We’re going to be doing something interesting very soon with Tumblr. The really fun part of this whole moment is that you can really play in the space and have fun and figure out what works. And if it doesn’t work, that’s okay, you can try something else.”

- Jennifer Preston, Social media editor, New York Times

salonika: pieto: Subcomandante Marcos on Neoliberalism and the...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:30:08 +0000

salonika:

pieto:

Subcomandante Marcos on Neoliberalism and the Media

criticalculture: Apropos of my last post…

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:59:41 +0000

criticalculture:

Apropos of my last post…

langer: This is at once the most amazing and the most...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:44:32 +0000

langer:

This is at once the most amazing and the most depressing thing I’ve seen in a long time: I laughed and cried and threw up in my mouth the whole way through each of the three minutes and thirteen seconds until its bitter end.

As if bringing in $200 million in annual revenue thanks in no small part to an affiliate marketing scam wasn’t enough, Zynga executives have another reason not to sleep at night: viciously snatching the promise of a meaningful and rewarding life from the flower of youth with shitty Facebook games.

(I kid. [Sort of?])

STATS: Has Twitter Flatlined Just Short of Mainstream? - Mashable.com

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:20:51 +0000

STATS: Has Twitter Flatlined Just Short of Mainstream? - Mashable.com:

shaneguiter:

When we see a trend that goes on for four months, there must be something to it. And that’s exactly what’s been happening to Twitter: according to Compete, it has flatlined for the last four months, showing absolutely no growth as far as uniques, visits, or rank go. And it’s not just Compete: Quantcast paints pretty much the same picture, and Twitter CEO Evan Williams has recently admitted that their traffic has stalled in the US.

"Among overthinky legal types (i.e., law professors), there are many who argue that Fair Use only..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:11:15 +0000

“

Among overthinky legal types (i.e., law professors), there are many who argue that Fair Use only exists because it is occasionally difficult to make a socially-desirable use of someone else’s copyrighted material. By “difficult,” I mean “burdened by transaction costs that make the whole license-getting process a real pain in the ass.” And by “transaction costs,” I mean “lawyers.”

Example: a college professor wants to include a Wall Street Journal article in a hand-out. By making a hundred copies of the article and passing them around class, he is committing copyright infringement. However, the Fair Use Doctrine gives him a compelling defense, because we want our children to learn, etc. The market failure theory argues that, no, it’s still copyright infringement, because there’s some actual market price the professor can and should pay for licensing the article. Only thing is, the steps the professor needs to take to acquire such a license (the kaching of hiring a lawyer and the time spent negotiating the rights) make the cost of doing so like a thousand times higher than the license fee itself. For an economist, this level of inefficiency is the moral equivalent of incest. The social value of the infringement is higher than the icky waste of resources, and thus we consider such infringement to be “fair.”

Now it’s easy to see where this goes. If transaction costs drop to zero, then there’s no reason to get all outraged and shit. Enter the Internet, and rights clearinghouses, and micropayments — all things that cut down on the wasteful lawyer fees and allow a more perfect licensing market to develop. If the actual cost to a professor to acquire a license to that Wall Street Journal article is $10, with no transaction costs, and the time it takes to acquire the license is the five minutes spent clicking on a few links and the PayPal, well, then ipso facto Q.E.D. thus and therefore there’s no need to justify copyright infringement. Fair Use becomes unnecessary, economically speaking.

Ironically, much of what Google is doing to make it easier to buy shit is in fact eroding the Fair Use doctrine that they’ll likely try to hide behind when Murdoch lawyers up.

For those of you interested in boring yourself further, the seminal article on this is Wendy Gordon’s Fair Use as Market Failure, which is filled with hilarious references to Betamax tapes because it was written in 1982.

”

- Spiegelman (in reference to Rupert Murdoch’s attack on fair use) (via soupsoup) (via 6h057)

Heh. ”Overthinky”

Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:23:12 +0000

Three Paradoxes of the Internet Age:

jratlee:

In the circles that I travel the Internet is often breathlessly embraced as the herald of all things good; the bringer of increased choice, personal empowerment, social harmony…and the list goes on. And yet, as with any powerful technology, the truth of its consequences eludes such a singular and happy narrative.

for example (which is why i’m an advocate of a bit more conscious participation - the technology we’re swimming in is great but only if you understand the big picture, the advantages and the disadvantages):

Three: The myth of personal empowerment takes root amidst a massive loss of personal control.

Social technologies are cloaked in a rhetoric of liberation (customers are in control, the internet fosters democracy, social technologies propagate truth etc.) that tend to obscure the fact that never before have we handed so much personal information over in exchange for so little in return. As we move from the “web of information” to the “web of people” (aka the Social Web) the output of all of this social participation is massive dossiers on individual behavior (your social network profiles, photos, location, status updates, searches etc.) and social activity. This loss of control over personal information is on a collision course with the law of unintended consequences: MIT’s Project Gaydar can spot your sexual preference by your social ties, Facebook checks are occurring customs and every quiz you take on Facebook delivers a shocking amount of personally identifiable information to third parties. Amidst this barrage of good news for how much power we wield in the transaction of commerce one has to wonder if we are giving away something quite precious in the bargain.

"The Web has been called a “database of intentions.” The bigger that database grows, and the more..."

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:55:49 +0000

“The Web has been called a “database of intentions.” The bigger that database grows, and the more deeply it is mined, the more difficult it may become to discern whether those intentions are our own or ones that have been implanted in us.”

- via roomthily: The informavore in its cage (via christinebeardsell)

squashedcomments: jgh: tanya77: alanfm78: Seems like it...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:52:35 +0000

squashedcomments:

jgh:

tanya77:

alanfm78:

Seems like it wasn’t too long ago we were striking over this technology that “was years and years” away from becoming a reality. Yea.

Click above to read on.

Big, Major FU to the Theater Owners.

I don’t know anything about this issue so please educate me. What is wrong with releasing movies straight-to-TV (an OnDemand type service, I am assuming?) Yes, it would be put theaters out of business, but is there something wrong with providing consumers more options? Getting the movies at home sounds pretty convenient to me. Not asking rhetorically, as I know I am not seeing the whole picture. Please explain. What is the argument of the theater owners?

I believe the theater owner’s arguments are roughly the same as the Michigan Newspapers who were horrified at the idea that towns would post notices online. I think the argument goes something like: We like money. And we’re scared we’re obsolete.

Social Isolation and New Technology

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:06:05 +0000

Social Isolation and New Technology:

azspot:

This Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey finds that Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People’s use of the mobile phone and the internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network – their strong and weak ties – internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks.