Notes on Shirky

Clay Shirky’s speech “Gin, Televsion, and Social Surplus” was both thought provoking and entertaining. I chuckled at many of his colorful analogies, such as his theory that a TV show like “Desperate Housewives” functions as a “cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.”

I also laughed when he referred to “that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t.” Isn’t this the plot of most episodes of Gilligan’s Island? I think all those episodes have merged into one in Shirky’s memory.

Back to the Cracker Barrel

After a long period of skepticism about the South Lake Union streetcar line, I had a major change of heart the first time I actually saw the three streetcars parked in their barn, awaiting their inauguaral run. What won me over — and actually shocked me — was the fact that they had NO ADS on them! Although they were a far cry from the picturesque old Seattle Waterfront Streetcar, they pleased me with their sleek modern lines, fun colors and, most of all, a feeling of PURITY and singleness of purpose that I could only attibute to their not being rolling billboards.

I am an enthusiastic proponent of public transportation, and yet I grimace almost every time a Seattle city bus rolls into sight, because it forces me to contemplate some giant, univited advertising message.

Mitch Joel points out that the Advertising Era is but a tiny “blip in the history of the world,” but from my perspective it feels like it has been around for a very long time. Looking at photos of cities in 1900, with billboards and placards crowding every wall and public conveyance, I feel like little has changed, except that advertising has found ways to seep ever deeper into the crevices of our lives.

In her book “No Logo,” Naomi Kline quotes an anonymous advertising executive who said that consumers “are like roaches – you spray them and spray them and they get immune after a while.” Thus the advertising industy’s need to concoct stronger roach sprays all the time. I hope that Joel is right in suggesting that social media and Web 2.0 may break the established cycles of marketing and usher in a new era of commerce. My eyes are stinging from all that roach spray.

If new media can bring us back to an era when commerce was conducted by people interacting with each other, I will be very happy. I am leery, however, of the possibility that new media will only bring us more pervasive and insidious forms of marketing in the guise of person-to-person interaction.

I love the ability to shop on the Internet, read customer reviews of products and research products by visiting chat rooms and technology blogs. And yet, not long ago, I completely abandoned the Internet when it comes to buying one type of product that is important to me: audio gear. After several bad experiences buying microphones and adaptors that looked great but turned out to be completely wrong for me, I discovered that there is an actual store for professional audio gear, called Pacific Pro Audio, tucked away in the fifth floor of an obscure office building in Queen Anne.

Going in there for the first time, I was shocked to discover a little gang of audio experts, surrounded by all sorts of gear, who were ready to sit down with me and discuss my needs, ask me questions and then pull something out of a drawer or a catalog that was exactly what I wanted. Even if the item only cost $5, they treated me with as much courtesy and interest as if I were buying the most expensive thing they offered.

Going in there now, I feel as if I’m visiting an old time general store, leaning against the counter and chatting with the store keeper, then watching him as he pulls something out of a cracker barrel for me to sample. He never gives me a sales pitch, never pressures me to get on their mailing list or join their club and never offers to “supersize” my order. He just shares his expertise and gets me what I need.

I LOVE DOING BUSINESS THIS WAY! I love it so much that I grab every opportunity to buy something at Pacific Pro, and I reccomend the store enthusiatically to my friends and clients. I consider it a personal mission to bring this company as much business as I can, in hopes that it will never dry up and blow away.

I’m hoping someone will find this blog post in a Google Search and share it with others, starting a little viral marketing campaign. Maybe someone in another business will read this and realize that they ought to be doing business like Pacific Pro. Maybe what I’m doing right now is exactly what Mitch Joel is talking about. If social media and Web 2.0 can bring back some of the best aspects of commerce in the pre-marketing era — the days of the cracker barrel — well, then I think we’ll really be getting somewhere.

Getting Down to Business

The “Podcasting Masters” book strikes me as being ironically more “down to business” than the Business Podcasting book. I appreciate the practical advice and strong opinions the “Masters” offer.

DOCUMENTARY INTERVIEW TECHNIQUES

This week’s reading in “Tricks of the Podcasting Masters” offers excellent advice about conducting interviews for talk-show style podcasts. Not all podcasts, however, are talk shows. The guidelines in the reading may not work as well for other formats such as documentary-style podcasts.

A documentary-style podcast usually features a narrator telling a story, intersperesed with exerpts from interviews with various people. In these programs, the audience usually does not hear a series of questions and answers between an interviewer and a guest; they only hear the interviewee’s answers.

Interviewing for this type of program requires somewhat different techniques, because the goal is not so much to have a conversation, but to generate statements from the interviewee that can stand on their own without the context of the interviewer’s question. One of the most important requirements is that interviewees begin their answers with complete sentences.

One way to achieve this is for the interveiwer to explain to the interviewee beforehand: “My questions will not be used in the finished program, only your answers, so please try to start your answers with complete sentences or re-state my questions in your answers.”

I often feel awkward asking this of an interviewee, however, so I have developed a subtler technique: I simply don’t ask any questions. Instead, I invite my interviewee to tell stories. Rather than starting with an interrogative word such as “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” or “how,” I start with “Tell us about…,” or “Explain how you…,” or “Describe your feelings…” Phrasing my “questions” this way pretty much forces the interviewee to begin with a complete sentence and tell a self-containted story.

If, for example, you ask an interviewee, “How’s the weather out there?,” you are likely to get the answer, “Oh, it’s fine.”

On the other hand, if you ask the interviewee to “Tell us where you are and describe what the weather’s like there today,” you may get an answer like, “Well, I’m in Boulder, Colorado and it’s warm and the sky is crystal clear and it just doesn’t get much better than this.” This is the kind of sound bite you want when producing documentary-style programs.

Credibility & Socially Responsible Social Research

The two papers on online credibility were as clear as mud to me. Is it really necessary to write in this convoluted manner in order to be credible in the social sciences?

Personally, I do not find this kind of writing credible. I find it obnoxious. I feel like the writer is trying to impress somebody and I suspect that he or she may be bullshitting. The more names and dates the writer puts after a phrase (Whatshisname,1993; Whoosie, 2001; Otherguy, 2003; Blow, 1987; Doe, 2005) the more irritated I get. Reading papers like these leads me to make obnoxious comments like the following:

…..

RECIPE FOR A SCHOLARLY PAPER

Section 1. Say what others have said

Section 2. Say nothing

Section 3. Call for further studies

Section 4. Provide three pages of endnotes.

…..

Having gotten that off my chest, I have a somewhat more serious issue with social studies like these. I am sure that most social researchers have good intentions and simply want to understand people and their relationships. What concerns me is that there may be others who take these well-intended studies and use them to learn how to manipulate people.  For example, if a researcher writes a definitive paper on what makes people trust a website, what is to stop someone else from using the findings for nefarious purposes: to create a deceptive website that looks trustworthy and to give bogus information the appearance of credibility?

I guess I’m wondering why social scientists put so much time into researching things like Credibility and Perception. It seems to me that such research encourages people to treat these as separate entities from the people and institutions with which they are associated.  It encourages people to see them as commodities, to be created and managed separately from the things, institutions or individuals of which they are (or may not be) qualities.  Indeed, almost all large organizations these days have Public Relations Departments or even outside P.R. consultants who operate independently from the rest of the organization and frequently present pictures that are very different from reality.

I like to think that there was a time when people simply told the truth in order to earn trust; when a company strove to make fine products in order to be perceived as a good company.

Today I get the impression that people in business, government and academia are putting “truth” and “trust” in separate boxes; treating “quality” and “perception of quality” as separate things. Perhaps it is somewhat realistic to do this, but it bugs me. I feel like it this is a very cynical and negative way of looking at the world.  I feel that it gives perception too much value and is helping foster a society in which image and reality are separate things and dishonesty is encouraged.

Before embarking on projects, social scientists should do some soul searching and ask: what is the real value of this research? Will my findings help make this a better world, or just help people mess it up some more?  Am I really working for humanity and science, or just for con artists and big corporations who want scientific methods for screwing people? Like gangsta rappers or makers of violent films, social scientists can claim that they are merely “reflecting reality,” but by publishing a particular view of reality, they are in a sense promoting it and helping to shape new realities.

Gigabit Networks & Flash Journalism

The article on Gigabit networks was an exciting preview of what is to come for broadband digital communication. Let’s hope the U.S. keeps up with other nations in developing digital infrastructure. The article used two terms that I hear all the time but don’t really understand. Maybe someone can help me with these.

1. What is “the digital divide?”

2. Everyone is saying the U.S. is now an “information economy.” What exactly does that mean? How can you base an entire economy on information?

The article on Flash journalism was also interesting. It is wonderful that writers and photographers are using Flash and the Web to provide more in-depth coverage of their subjects than is possible in more traditional media.

I watched the PBS Flash slideshow about Speedo, a demolition derby driver. It was fascinating to me that this slideshow was created as an adjunct to a two hour VIDEO documentary. You would think that in two hours, with moving pictures, sound and music, you would be able to say everything there is to say about a demolition derby guy. As a video producer myself I know that you can’t. There is always stuff – often great stuff – that just won’t fit into your movie.

In this case, the stuff that didn’t fit were details about how Speedo modifies his cars. So the producers put together a Flash slideshow, using interviews with Speedo and a little bit of music combined with still photos. The result is very interesting, informative and entertaining. And so much easier to produce and edit than video!

I laughed a little because this format took me right back to Junior High School when I was in an elective class called slides and tapes, in which we produced little documentaries using Kodachrome slides and reel-to-reel tape recordings. The fanciest things we did were to use left and right stereo channels for two-track sound and to patch two carousel projectors together with a “dissolve” unit so that images would fade smoothly into each other. It seems primitive now compared to all the elaborate things we can do in video, and yet it was a great media. And here it comes again, called “Flash Media” and being hailed as the latest thing.

I think that a slideshow is the perfect media for a lot of projects. Video is fabulous but it is so difficult and time consuming to have to work with continuous, moving images synchronized with sound. The ability to use still photos roughly synchronized with sound vastly simplifies production, post-production and delivery over the Web, yet the results still pack a lot of audio-visual power.

A Very Short Story

Kimberly Appelcine has written the best essay on “The Elements of Storytelling” I have ever read. We all know a good story when we hear one, but it’s often hard to define exactly what separates a good story from a poor one. Appelcine provides some simple guidelines for creating an effective story, based on the following elements: setting, character, backstory, plot and detail.

A few days ago while I was working my weekend job at a restaurant, I made a quick remark to a customer. She was taking a photograph of the bookshelf above her booth, which is decorated with a calculated jumble of books and knickknacks.

“I see you like my collection,” I remarked as I passed her table. “I’m a knickknack collector and I’ve run out of room in my apartment, so I started bringing stuff here.”

The lady laughed appreciatively. Why? I realized a moment later that I had done more than just make a remark; I had told a very short story. I analyzed it in terms of Appelcine’s elements.

My story had a setting (my crowded apartment), a character (a crazy knickknack collector), a backstory (collector runs out of room in his apartment) and a plot (collector solves problem by bringing knickknacks to work). The only thing missing was detail, but after all it was only a two-sentence story and the knickknacks themselves provided the detail.

Of course I wasn’t thinking about storytelling technique when I made this remark. I think that we all have an innate sense of how to tell a story and just naturally tend to put ideas and experiences into story formats. When we sit down to deliberately write a story, however, we often lose track of this innate sense, so a simple set of guidelines like Appelcine’s is very helpful.

Week Four Reading

Jean Vanderdonckt’s article “Visual Design Methods in Interactive Applications” made my head spin with its complex and highly analytical approach to design. It also made me laugh because of it very poor translation from Dutch (?). Poor English is especially comical in an academic paper that attempts to use big words and fancy concepts. Can anyone tell me the meaning of “one sealed unsectile thing?” I Googled the word “unsectile” and every single hit was a version of Vanderdonkt’s article.

Is poor translation respsonisble for Vanderdonkt’s statement that “human eyes favor the left-hand and lower area of any layout?” Surely, the author must have meant that our eyes favor the left and UPPER portion of a layout. Isn’t this what all the eye scans have shown and what F-shaped reading patterns are all about?

Part of the dizzying complexity of Vanderdonkt’ analysis may be the result of redundancy. How much difference is there, really, between Consistency and Predictability, between Simplicity and Economy and between Complexity and Intricacy, that each term needs it own section in this article? And I just don’t get how “leveling” and “sharpening” can be opposites in design or in any context.

I have never found this kind of analytic approach to be very helpful. When I sit down to design something I don’t really think about whether I want it to be symmetrical or understated or singular or anything conceptual like that. I might think about whether I want things to be red or black or square or round. Mostly I think about the subject matter and I find that the design just starts flowing with a logic of its own.

A VERY TANGLED WEB INDEED

Mark Bernstein’s article “Patterns of Hypertext” was virtually impossible for me to understand. Trying to read it was like being in a fever dream. What kind of crazy, maze-like world is the author describing?

He opens with a sentence about the “apparent unruliness of hyptertex.” I have only a vague idea of what hypertext is to begin with, so how hypertext could be “unruly,” like a rambunctious child, is way beyond me. His assumption that the unruliness of hypetext is “apparent” showed me that he had left me in the dust right at the starting line.

At first I thought this was a scientific paper about technical problems that occur in the engineering of massive online databases. Eventually, however, I started getting the impression that it is actually about literature! About fiction, no less! Apparently people are writing fiction on the Internet in little pieces that only make sense if you navigate through them using a confusing system of hyperlinks. Sounds like loads of fun and guaranteed job security for a new generation of high-tech literary critics. Figuring out James Joyce had become just too ho-hum, right?

And all this has been going on for years, too. At the end of Bernstein’s article there are no less than 76 citations of works of hypertext literature as well as scholarly papers on this subject, going back to the mid 1980s.

I’m beginning to feel a lot like Rip Van Winkle.