Posted 12:02 by Mark Federman permanent link
Traditional News Media are Obsolete?

Well, I ended up saying something to that effect on the Global Sunday show this weekend, and it was picked up by the National Post and wire service today.

A University of Toronto professor says consumers want to be more interactive with their news and have greater command over it. "Newspapers have been obsolesced for a long time. With the concentration of ownership, the demise of people like Dan Rather, television is obsolesced as well," Mark Federman, chief strategist of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, told Global Sunday yesterday. "When something is so widely used, it's obsolete." Mr. Federman says the mainstream media, including television and newspapers, are so ubiquitous that they are "obsolete" and must reinvent themselves if they are to remain relevant. That leaves the mainstream media trying to keep pace with Internet and wireless technologies.

If you'd like to tune in and hear some of these thoughts explored in more than a soundbite, I'll be on the Jennifer Mather show, broadcast on radio station CKNW in Vancouver, this afternoon at 14:30 PST (17:30 EST). You can get the stream live by clicking the "Listen Live" button at the top of the page.
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Posted 15:13 by Mark Federman permanent link
Getting the News

I came across a very cool site that captures the way in which we are informed. 10 x 10 grabs news feeds from Reuters, the BBC and NY Times International, together with pictures, and composes a 10 x 10 grid of images. Each image represents one of the top 100 words found in a lexical analysis of the news feeds. Clicking on an image opens links to the stories that mention that word. The most frequently used words are tracked hourly, daily, and monthly, and provide a literal interpretation of the mosaic of information that informs our construction of the reality of the world.

I've often said that today, mass media is not media for the masses, but media by the masses. Everytime we watch a few minutes of a news channel, listen to a snippet of radio, read a couple of blog posts or even walk by a newspaper box, we are in effect becoming our own news director, filtering and sifting a myriad of sources that eventually becomes our gestalt of what's happening right now. We make it up as we go along, continually creating and re-creating the world in which we live in our own image(nation).

Two additional sources of tiles for the mosaic that are of interest should you happen to live in Canada. Sirius, the U.S.-based satellite radio company, has an application before the CRTC to deliver 120 (and counting) digital channels of content to Canadians regardless of where they travel. And Dose is about to launch in a couple of weeks that promises to provide a multi-modal channel of news, entertainment and information, a bunch of which will be produced by the users themselves, according to its president, Noah Godfrey. I like satellite radio, as it represents a retrieval of long-obsolesced radio in a new form that corresponds to our existing everywhere at once. Original radio was an intimate medium, and is the direct ancestor of the Internet in a way that television is not. Satellite radio retrieves the intimacy, everywhere at once, and permits us to be our own program directors. Dose, on the other hand, would be just another obsolescent content play, were it not for the involvement of the users in producing the content that, while absent from the publicity so far, is a key element of their plan. At least, that's what Godfrey said when he, I, and Kevin Shea, the head of Sirius Canada taped tomorrow's Global Sunday this afternoon. The show airs on your local Global Television station Sunday, March 27, at 17:30 in most locales across Canada, except in Manitoba and B.C., where it is seen at 17:00, and 19:30 on Prime.
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Posted 18:54 by Mark Federman permanent link
First Kill all the CIOs

If you have ever wondered why technology is often completely frustrating to people, listening in to this gaggle of self-serving, blind-as-a-bat dunderheads that CIO magazine assembled to talk about How To Save The Internet will begin to clue you in. Talk about being completely unaware of not only their own collective history, but unable to foresee the clear consequences of their proposed actions, namely the fast demise of the businesses that have grown on the basis of the openness about which they are complaining. For example:

Paul Kurtz, the executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance. "We need more leadership at a higher level of government," he says. At the Department of Homeland Security, he says, cybersecurity has been buried, and he believes DHS should have an assistant secretary-level person for cybersecurity.

Get a legal opinion. Christofer Hoff, CISO of WesCorp, says that users should require their vendors to have lawyers run software through the assessment mill and churn out a legal opinion on how its security would hold up in a liability case.

Ed Amoroso thinks AT&T can make a ton of money off this idea: Return control to the network providers (like his own company's phone system in the 1970s, he says, a time when Ma Bell controlled everything, including the technology's interface), and let the providers charge you for doing all of the filtering, traffic analytics, worm detection and incident response. "That's my solution," Amoroso says. "Create a service. Make money."

James Whittaker says programmable PCs are dangerous, so why not treat them like guns? "Let's make all end user devices nonprogrammable," he says. "No one can connect to the Internet on a machine that creates code. If you want a computer to do programming, you would have to be licensed. We could license software companies to purchase programmable machines, which would be completely traceable along with the code created on them."

There's more, but you get the idea. So let's sum up what they're proposing, shall we? The government - in the U.S., the Department of Homeland Security no less, the same folks who have those lists that mistakenly prevent people from getting on airplanes for no good reason - should take overall control. The lawyers should be the gatekeepers of innovation. Devices that attach to the periphery should be dumb, and totally metered, and all user programming (which, after all, only accounts for about 80%+ of the software that we're all running to run and use the Internet) should be banned.

As an antidote to these loonies, here's Cory Doctorow reminding us that All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites.
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Posted 16:11 by Mark Federman permanent link
Canada to Outlaw Screwdrivers!

Well, sort of. A group of business leaders from Canada's cryptography industry writes this open letter to Canada's Ministers of Industry and Heritage, in whose portfolios the proposed amendments to the Copyright Act fall. Their main objection to a U.S. DMCA-style law is that it will prevent research into technological security measures. Even an exception granted for legitimate research is only a defense; it would neither prevent, nor reimburse the accused for, spurious litigation brought by companies who would prefer their security holes remain hidden. (The problem is, of course, that the holes remain hidden to customers, and open to criminals.) In the letter, the signatories observe "Legal protection for TPMs [technological protection measures] is the equivalent of making screw-drivers illegal because they can be used to break and enter. Good legislation targets the illegal act, not the legal tools the crook might use." Now might be a good time to get in touch with your MP, and/or sign the petition.
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Posted 07:40 by Mark Federman permanent link
A Big Online Welcome to... Canada?!

This sounds more like something that would come out of Washington, rather than Ottawa. Michael Geist asks the question,
What Do You Want the Internet to Be? He reports on policy proposals being considered by the federal government that would significantly change not only Canadian's use and engagement with the 'net, but introduce an entirely new dimension to surveillance and interception of communication.

If lawful access becomes reality, Canada’s telecommunications service providers (TSPs) will be required to refit their networks to allow for real-time interception of communications, to have the capability of simultaneously intercepting multiple transmissions, and to provide detailed subscriber information to law enforcement authorities without a court order within 72 hours.

Moreover, Canada’s TSPs will be subject to inspections and required to provide the government with reports on the technical capabilities of their networks. All of these activities will be shrouded in secrecy with TSPs facing fines of up to $500,000 or sentences of up to five years in jail for failing to keep the data collection confidential.

Added to the one-sided (and not favouring users, educational institutions or the evolution of our culture) proposals put forward by the Bulte Committee, and we begin to get a made-in-the-USA picture of Canada's online future. If you're not up on these issues, find out more, and start writing those parliamentarians!
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Posted 22:17 by Mark Federman permanent link
The U.N. Ad the U.S. Won't Show

"If there were landmines here, would you stand for them anywhere?" That's the tagline from a horrifying ad sponsored by the United Nations campaign against landmines. The United States is one of only a handful of nations that has not signed the AntiPersonnel Mine-Ban Treaty. It's in "good company," along with Cuba, Haiti, Somalia, Latvia, Poland and Finland. U.S. television networks are apparently refusing to air the ad that raises too many uncomfortable questions. But you can see it, either on the site, or here, here (torrrent), and here.

It's time to hold some American politicians' feet to the fire, so to speak.
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Posted 10:32 by Mark Federman permanent link
Back to the Future - Retrievals and Advertising

Staples Business Depot is currently running a radio ad that has a female secretary ordering office supplies from you-know-where. While she is gushing over the catalogue selection, she informs us in a stage-whisper that she is also getting some accessories for the boss's desk. Enter the boss, who praises her astute shopping abilities, tells her to take the rest of the day off, and then - here comes the punchline - tells her that he prefers pewter. "How did you know," the nonplussed secretary wonders in amazement. "That's why I'm the boss," says this throwback to 1959. Yuck!

A lot of advertising - especially nostalgia advertising - comes directly from the retrieval quadrant of the tetrad. But retrievals are most effective when they retrieve the old cliché as an archetype in a new form. In the case of advertising, the most effective use of retrievals is when they put a new, often ironic or satirical, twist on the worn out joke. Failing that, a retrieval of a cliché that brings back a warm memory works as well.

What certainly doesn't work is the retrieval of situations that are unacceptable today, without the benefit of the satirical probe. This observation is what separates the office supply company from Richard Branson's Virgin Mobile launch in Toronto last week that featured a live-action cartoon of a superhero (Branson) "rescuing" cliché-stereotype bottle-blonde, sexy nurses. While the Registered Nurse's Association of Ontario was up-in-arms over Branson's publicity stunt, the fact that he created what was obviously an over-the-top, cartoonish send-up provided the necessary satirical signal that told most people that this was to be taken as comedy. We may disagree about the tastefulness of the humour, but the message was clear - do not take this seriously.

While SBD may have intended for their radio spot to be humorous or ironic, that they played it relatively straight and ended with the poisonous line "That's why I'm the boss" means that their ad is self-defeating. I'm guessing that many, if not most, women, and even half-way enlightened men, will experience a visceral skin-crawling reaction on their next visit to that particular office supply company - if they return at all.

Remember, retrievals necessarily bring back the old cliché in a new form. Doing otherwise will force your current medium into a reversal that brings out the opposite effect to your original intention.
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Posted 19:30 by Mark Federman permanent link
Crossing McLuhan and Biology?

Boy, things sure can get interesting in my Mind, Media and Society II class. Take this entry from one of the seminar participants.

The cellular Homeostasis process is worth probing further from a language/culture perspective (Tissue Culture?). The cellular membrane serves as what McLuhan would call the "Break Boundary" The point at which one mode of existence separates from another. It is a turbulent interface where effluent material from one (let's say for arguments sake, the exterior) environment serves as the influent material of the internal environment and is absorbed and constituted in the host environment which then processes its own effluent materials and excretes them into the exterior environment. This move towards homeostasis--keeping a stable and predictable interior constitution--has the effect of changing both the organism and its environment simultaneously such that, as an organism empties the contents of itself into the environment that environment then has been changed.

...

What constitutes the "membrane" in our new wired environment?
If it is ideas that are being allowed to permeate this membrane then what is being kept out?

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Posted 11:29 by Mark Federman permanent link
CNN's "War in Iraq" Set to Rambo

Among the many things we have, for which we can truly give thanks to the Bush Administration, are the continued explosions of creativity, and constant demonstrations that mass media today are media by the masses, not merely media for the masses. The latest is this incredible mashup of CNN's War in Iraq coverage with the dialogue from Rambo. While it dramatically satirizes this war in a "life imitating art" fashion, this piece also demonstrates the importance of recognizing the changes that have occurred in the way culture is created in an age of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive proximity. Tight controls on intellectual property do not stimulate the creation of art and culture; rather they stifle cultural development and blockade the necessary evolution of culture in a world where we all are reaching out and touching one another. Heck, you can hardly swing a cyber-cat in the chat room without hitting someone else's digiSelf right there next to you! Never mind the scrambled metaphors - go enjoy Irark by Monochrom.
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