Wednesday, May 8, 2002

The New Old Thing, Part 4

Eric Olson just put up the latest in his series on New Media in the Old.

But will Disney want that?

Here's Study: PVRs Not Necessarily the Death of TV Advertising, from Ernest Miller in LawMeme (the Yale Law blog).

Democracy 2.0.x

One of the people I'll miss seeing here in Minneapolis (I hate how little time I'm ending up having here) is Steven Clift, who thinks and writes about democracy. He calls himself a "radical incrementalist." I think geology thinks about itself the same way — at least along the fault lines. I mean that in a positive sense, by the way, and think of myself kinda the same way.

One of the great unfulfilled promises of the Net, I believe, is bringing democracy back to the Commons, where it benefits from clue exchange among people who have stong convictions yet open minds.

It'll happen.

Squeezeband

I've been through two phones with bad data ports here at the hotel. Neither worked. But the data port in the other phone in the room works, so I have a wi-fi base station hooked up to it, and it's doing the dialing for me. Nice.

Still, the lines are highly analog, and the best speed I can get is about 24k.

This is barely fast enough to blog. But it hasn't timed out yet, which is what happened constantly over the DSL line I was borrowing the last couple of nights.

Anyway, I'm back to having some sypathy for the dial-up folks out there. Definitely a minimal class of service.

Pixels speak faster than ink

Sheila's a Big Paper journalist who just scooped herself by going live on her blog with some news.

Here's the link. Hint: it's a musical landmark event. Another hint: Sheila's blog is Subterranean Homepage News.

Maybe they should change that X to an N

I'm finally here in Minneapolis, connected by dial-up to my ISP's (Xo's) Phoenix access number. The only number in Minnesota goes to a Quest service desk recording. My data speed is 21k. I'm paying some high charge per minute while I'm trying to find Xo's toll-free number on their web site. Here's what they tell me when I search:

Toll-free Internet Access Number
If you choose to add dial-up access to your Web Site Hosting account, XO” currently offers over 350 local dial-up numbers. In addition, a toll-free number gives you the ability to dial into your Web Site Hosting account from those few locations where a local access number is not available. Toll-free number access is available with all Web Site Hosting plans and is billed at $6 per hour (this is charged in addition to the monthly fee of $19.95 for each added dial-up account). There is no setup fee for toll-free number access.

Thank you. I've long since set it up. AND ALL I WANT IS THE FUCKING NUMBER, OKAY?

[Later...] Credit where due::: in the next email session, they sent me both a new local number and the 800 number.

What would that make Jack Valenti?

Back on an upbeat note, there's a Larry Lessig interview. Says he's "already the Net's most famous freedom fighter."

[Later...] Here's High Heel Jack.

Later

Got a lot of prep work to do for my keynote in Minneapolis on Thursday. I'm on a 6:25am flight there (by way of Phoenix). So the blogging's gonna be a little thin.

Blogmark it and check back often

Bruce Kasanoff is a terrific writer whose new blog is Less. The subtitle is Do less of the things that drive customers crazy.

Getting what the advertisers overpay for

Brad Templeton tells Dave Farber he'd like to see TV offered on a pay-per-view basis, and explains more in The Future of TV Advertising. It's good stuff, but it's lost on the sell side of television, which has had an increasingly bad-faith relationship with its customers — the advertisers.

See, what makes TV so lucrative for the networks and stations and agencies (and everybody but the guys paying for it) is its extreme inefficiency and persistent unaccountability of the whole system.

Most advertising is wasted. But as long as there appears to be no alternative, advertisers will continue to pay for, and rationalize, the waste. But as PVRs like TiVo continuously improve the efficiency of TV viewing, they only beg more questions about the poor efficiency and accountability of TV advertising.

The industries that sell that advertising doesn't want those questions asked. The status quo is too lucrative.

Make commercial TV accountable and efficient, and suddenly the sellers are making a lot less money. Ergo: no motive to change.

But the change will come, one way or another. Count on it.