Isn't it amazing that there's always exactly 60 minutes' worth of news everyday, and that, when transcribed, it fills exactly one newspaper?
Have you ever stopped to think how utterly fortuitous it is that every televisual story worth telling can be neatly broken into segments of exactly 22 minutes (plus commercials) or 48 minutes (ditto)? That every story that makes a good subject for a film takes somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours to tell? That all albums fit conveniently on one or sometimes two CDs, except for best-of compilations? That all books are exactly long enough to bind within a single set of covers and not so short as to allow those covers to touch in the middle?
These are all technological norms that represent technological hangovers: We now assume that certain distributors will carry a particular sort of carton, and its contents will go onto a certain kind of shelf; 10-foot-tall photography books don't fit in those cartons, and the trucks are already fitted for those cartons, and the shelves have been screwed into the walls of the bookstores.
The soul of wisdom is in knowing that all laws are local, that the universal truths you imbibed with your first milk are not universal at all, but rather created. There are stories that take 15 hours to tell, books that stand taller than a man.
Enter the Internet. YouTube Inc. shows us that there's a gigantic market for "shows" that last between 10 seconds and 10 minutes. Blogging tools have conquered all notions of column-inches as understood by magazines and newspapers. Twitter has upset what we thought we knew about blogging, reducing the minimum length of a compelling message to a few characters and increasing the maximum frequency of a communique from a couple an hour to several per minute.
But YouTube and Twitter don't do the same stuff their predecessors did. The kind of storytelling that goes into a YouTube clip has a different rhythm and a different aesthetic appeal than 22-minute sitcoms. Some of this is down to the relative maturity of the media: Twenty-two-minute sitcoms are highly evolved creatures, as formally bounded as a sonnet. Their highly paid practitioners have an arcane vocabulary and procedure to describe the system by which they are assembled to achieve maximal effect; we, the audience for these shows, have imbibed so many of them that we unconsciously expect the twists and turns the storytellers are delivering, even if we lack a conscious understanding of the formal structure and the specialist jargon needed to describe it.
By contrast, the short Internet video isn't a single genre -- it's more like cosmic narrative dust hurtling through space, clumping together here and there into larger conglomerates, then splitting apart before stabilizing. There's no formal structure to the eight-minute teenage-ramble-from-the-bedroom -- both the creator and the audience are winging it.
But there's another reason that these new media tell stories in different ways from their old media predecessors: They're telling different stories. TV sitcoms, novels, feature films, and other traditional forms are cages as well as frames. The reason that every sitcom lasts 22 minutes is that no one tries to make sitcoms about stories that take five minutes to tell. The reason movies last 90 minutes is that no one tries to make feature films about subjects that take 30 seconds to elucidate -- or 30 days.
The critics of new media often point to its failure to live up to the standards of old media. Some scientists and science journalists wring their hands at the idea that the Mars landers and the Large Hadron Collider emanate information in the form of anthropomorphized Twitter messages, arguing that these messages lack the formal virtues of science reporting and papers.
It's true. They do. They don't succeed at being better in-depth science articles than the science articles. They succeed at being better Twitter messages than science articles; they succeed at producing and sustaining a different kind of interest and understanding than a long article in the weekend paper.
The low cost of deploying new media online is revealing a heretofore unsuspected appetite for stories in different boxes than we've heretofore used -- and a universe of stories waiting to be told.
— Cory Doctorow, Internet activist, blogger, co-editor of Boing Boing
If our parents had the ability to zap when they were young, would they have developed this clip-consciousness?
I think they would.By now it is not a genetic thing. BY NOW:) it is still social.The way of learning.Perception is a psychic process and it's formation depends on upbringing conditions. There ARE people older 40 and having clip consciousness. George Lucas for example:)))).
Old media allows us to be battered by the message that interrupts what we tune in for. Either some lame gadget, or an ad for another show that we may or may not be interested in.
New media allows us virtually unlimited content consumption from nearly unlimited sources and without interruption in some cases. That is not to say that there are no available distractions, many new media sources attempt to do old media interrupts to try to traditionalize their consumers with a message that is irrelevant.
The best forms of new media allow this indulgent consumption of content without the old rules that say we need an interruption every couple minutes to endure 4 minutes of irrelevance.
Regarding television, one of my favorite innovations of late is the dvr, so I can FF through commercials! Is that a new media or a new rule for old media?
Appreciate the advise to not judge the new by old standards.
It's not that we didn't have clip-consciousness 50 years ago, we were just never given access to them
I don't really agree with you gordonmattey.I am talking to my studeints about zapping- a great example of clip-consciousness deminstration and almost most of them say that their parents hate when they are changing the channels.My mom says she just can't catch a meaning, for 1-2 seconds,and that is more than enough for me to understand not only what is broadcasted but also to evaluate whether I want to watch it or not.
In our country there were not any remote control Tv-sets or multiple channels or MtV till the beginning of 90ths.So that's why the mode of perception of the people who were born after 79 is really different from the older ones
I think what is happening is that human behaviour adapts to the environment. Our brain is not changing, our bains are not increasing to take in more media.
Let's look at the assumptions;
1. Perception has become quick. I think what is really happening here is that as the number of media and platforms have grown, and with the internet, content producers are not constrained by the economic incentives of mass market broadcast TV. What does that mean? Well, producers can start publishing clips. It's not that we didn't have clip-consciousness 50 years ago, we were just never given access to them.
2. Attention has become weak. It's not that we can't concentrate for long periods, it's that we choose to concentrate on certain things more than others. With more options, we have a need to select and filter out stuff quickly, hence channel surfing. This results in it looking like we can't give our attention, but the fact is we are doing this to help us deal with everything. I'd argue that once we find something we like, our attention is as good (no matter what your age), if not better becuase of niche content, as it was before.
My point is that to adapt to a relative increase in supply of media options, with our total available attention being static (~17 hours awake time), we have to filter stuff out.
The length of program is really irrelevant, people still watch 2 hour movies. The economics of the internet enable us to support many more types of programs with different durations and formats. I think we should be wary of stating up front that is has to be short all the time. We will give attention if the content is relevant to us.
My venture is ComedyUpYours.com featuring(if you can call it 'featuring') some known comedians, web2.0's RSSS (real simple & stupid syndication) and propeller hats are more than welcome.
Predictify's business model with a twist would be applied or merged with "Americas funniest videos" of old media and NEW RULES! Well, upon my return from "Contentonomics", my wisdom gained might lean toward canning the project. Just like a screen play, blockbuster names attached is almost a must (thanks to much time spent on facebook I can now be a social introvert and still connect).
I do agree with you completely. Absolutely.
How about virtual venues such as (just the RIA) the Information Week 500 Virtual Conference (which was a mind blowing RIA experience..the excitement was similar to when I was first on Prodigy in 1993 anticipating i.evolution) how would the splitting profits apply?
Next up: How to monetize web2.0 with fried turkey legs. jiv.eturkey.com - overnight fried turkey delivery service gone social. YOU CAN PICK AND NAME YOUR TURKEY LIVE VIA QIK (social bookmark it too) before it's fried and fedex'd to you. Now that would technically be a 'barnyard' start up versus the 'garage'.
Hey JWallace, give us some enlightment about your venture. I promise to not steal your idea (I might not talk for the rest of the people here).
But I think that's the way we should go, that we actually do doesn't depend on me - so your venture might be just fine. But do you agree with me? the revenues for the content should be split in order to keep everyone happy.
Just think about how Ticketmaster charges you for the ticket, for their convenience charge, a venue charge, taxes and then delivery charge.
Time has proven people are very diverse and we all process information a bit differently. I truly believe the mix of old media and new media helps to satisfy the multitude of differences amoung the masses. And quite honestly, my tastes and desire for old and new varies on the day and my personality in the moment. I do not believe I am unique.
The constant is our need for information and knowledge. The variable is our current and up to the minute desire for the method of delivery.
Sure, no one makes feature films that are 5 minutes or 30 seconds long - they're called short films and they've been around since "old media" was new.
And filmmakers have been making films (much) longer than 2 hours for ages without the benefit of the internet - Feuillade serials, Shoah, Satantango, Empire, Out 1, etc.
I mean, I love new media as much as the next guy, but old media is only a cage if you limit yourself to what's playing at your local multiplex.
Have you signed up for 12seconds.tv yet? Upload just 12-second-long videos. Why 12 seconds, they anticipate you asking? Because any longer would be boring.
But it was in the 1960s that some filmmakers (Stan Brakhage, possibly?) started playing with editing to see how many images they could cram into our eyes and attention. I can't remember the number, but it was amazing how much you could retain of a film with more than one image per second for a few minutes.
Not all trends can be projected linearly. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that no one is going to launch 6seconds.tv -- although I just checked, and the domain is available!
So I'm going to go further out on a limb, and predict that someone will introduce longer-form media chunks. Maybe Twitter actually is on its way to that-- the lifestream, where the units may be 140 characters, but the frequency becomes like film at 60 frames per second -- creating the illusion of continuous motion.
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Email is my alpha and omega, my file-system and social register, my backup and my memoir. If I need to find a document, I don't search my hard-drive; I search my email for the copy I sent to someone when it was done. I sometimes write novels on email, sending out the day's pages to a mailing list of well-wishers who keep me honest, nudging me if I miss a page. Version control? Who needs it? Just find all the copies I sent or received and order them by date!
Bunhill Cemetery is just down the road from my flat in London. It’s a handsome old boneyard, a former plague pit (“Bone hill” -- as in, there are so many bones under there that the ground is actually kind of humped up into a hill). There are plenty of luminaries buried there -- John “Pilgrim’s Progress” Bunyan, William Blake, Daniel Defoe, and assorted Cromwells. But my favorite tomb is that of Thomas Bayes, the 18th-century statistician for whom Bayesian filtering is named.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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