Week 1: From Gutenberg to Sarnoff – 500 years of media
What has changed in the media environment in the 500 years of modernity?
Notes from Clay class lecture:
1991 – watershed, NSF directed congress to allow public access to the Internet
Different types of media:
I did it by myself/large project
I did it professionally/amateur
Distribution via twitter – fluid media landscape
Media Landscape over last 500 years
Highlights:
Alphabet
Printing press (assembling letters – Gutenburg – movable type) – first big effect = abundance
Translation then occured – into local languages, not just the languages of the scholars
Print new books – ie one that noone had ever read before – capacity explodes – novelty
Concept of publishers – deciding what is good enough to publish, b/c they bear the economic risk – printers therefore became publishers
abundance + novelty leads to popularity, so you have to figure what will be popular.
Downside of abundance, is INFORMATION OVERLOAD (began in 1500s) – ie too many books!! More likely – FILTER FAILURE (ie we begin to feel overloaded – normally we don’t)
Downside of novelty is the RISK OF QUALITY – just b/c its out there, doesn’t mean its good.
Downside of popularity is VULGARITY – meaning of the people.
Brits: Invisible College – publishing their experimental results, ie chemistry vs alchemists, doesn’t matter about the results, it was the openness/transparency culture – and this is what makes science science (Francis Bacon – Scientific Method) – BUT it needed printing press, and fast postal system. Media makes capabilities available to groups, but its the decisions the people make is the thing that happen – so – media is the enabler, techno-determinism breaks down. What are therefore the cultural norms around the use of the media as THIS is the important thing.
Next – big thing is the Telegraph (harnessing electrical flow through the air) – the harnessing of electricity. Telepgraph establishes 2 way media – relatively synchronous media between 2 telegraph operators.
Next the telephone – also 2 way comms.
Now information outruns objects – eg horses.
At same time as telephone: photography, sound, movies then movies with sound.
Finally – 1901 – Marconi, electromagnetic spectrum – harnessing the flow again: radio and then TV.
Then this was just deepening of these for the next many years.
1) Public and private media differ, eg “I love you” phone and TV
Things good at creating conversation (phone) not good at creating groups (newspaper) and visa versa.
2) High fixed costs for publishing – eg newspaper, recording studio etc – core of Guttenberg Economics, ie the risk – > filter -> then publish, ie the risk is dealt with BEFORE publishing b/c its SO expensive.
3) As a result of 2) – Positive Returns to Scale further raises the hurdles to further participation. Production costs lower after the upfront capital has been spent. Eg donut franchising, cost to produce next donut is incrememntal when havig paying customers, and profits rocket – costs lower and profits to the extent there is the customer base. This means you become even harder to compete with – a handful of giants happen – unless there was govt intervention. Reach is a function of capital.
4) The structure of public media hides professionals from amateurs and visa versa – ie NYT, we don’t know how they make it, and they don’t know what we do with it when we get it – eg what we read, what we talk to our friends about.
STREAM:
Create -> Distribute -> Consume ->React -> Converse
The only point where these realms of professional and amateur interact is at the CONSUME moment
5) Asymmetry of cost= Asymm of quality = Asymm of flow
ie huge asymm of cost of production and consumption ie printing press is v v expensive, a paper back is cheap. SO production quality increases, ie blockbusters get so difficult for competitors to re create, ie 500 helicopters blown up in this movie! Also quality – public isn’t a threat, videoing on television, or coping print because homemade quality is SO bad.
All of the above was true for 500 years and NONE of them are true now… But culture is used to this, and people are freaked out, because the real world isn’t like this anymore.
Linux is another invisible college – sharing through media but it took the medium and the cultural norms to make the Linux community take off.
DIGITAL REVOLUTION
1) 1′s and 0″s are the same for EVERYONE – you have the perfect copy. So the idea of a copy goes away.
2) All the Internet is is getting data from point a to point b – with no guarantees. This is the the smallest unit of networking, the dyad. Anyone can do it – its the equivalent of inventing your own alphabet = ARBITRARY MEDIA.
3) ARBITRARY RECIPIENTS – ie any A and any B in any combination and any amount. No public private divide anymore, kills 1) above.
4) Peered infrastructure – symmetrical like the phone. Internet is sym like a phone (two-way conversation) but also public like the TV. Sym media always used to be private, and asymm media used to always be public – this is NO longer the case.
THere is now a $0 marginal cost* ie sending an email is free.
5) No competitive advantage in distribution * – no one has access to a faster network end to end. Network neutrality.
6) Scale isn’t controlled by investment – ie I can get popular with no money.
We now have a envoromnent (media) where everyone can participate in groups or individually.
