Sunday, July 4, 2004

For reading out loud

Dave and AKMA have brought up the subject of a free audio Cluetrain version.

To summarize my comments in response to AKMA's post, I think we should at least explore the possibilities.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting two things: 1) the audio book (CD and cassette) is not, to my knowledge, abridged, in spite of what Amazon says; and 2) for what it's worth, it's recorded (at our insistence) in our own voices (which only seemed right, given what we said about voice in the book).

The revolution will be televised, dammit

Terry Heaton: TV News in a Postmodern World. A sample...

The broadcast metrics of reach and frequency are bound for the grave. A study released this week by InsightExpress finds that people (with DVRs) are most inclined to view ads they have not seen before, and consequently are most likely to zap ads they've already seen. Joe Mandese of MediaDailyNews wrote, "it suggests that the economics of a business based on serving redundant commercial impressions to a mass audience in order to reach an impressionable few will no longer work in the future."

Bonus link: Why young people don't watch local news. I also added a comment.

The divider of all fears

The biggest take-away from Supernova was what I learned about global guerillas from John Robb in the session I substitute-moderated on Distributed Terrorism.

At first I thought it was just really scary shit. Which it is. But then I realized that the decentralized nature of the enemy's work was also something we've been training ourselves to understand for a long time. As with the Net itself, the smarts are on the outside.

I'm not even sure where to go with this, other than to stay curious about it, especially on this day, which (along with the familiar virtues of the country born on it) marks a turningn point in the tide of colonialism, a form of centralization that still persisted for another two centuries after the Declaration of Independence was signed.