Robert Sharp

A colleague of mine had a leaving party last weekend, so we all went out and got drunk. I spent most of Saturday in bed, and for the rest of the bank-holiday weekend I felt bad that I had squandered a day of my precious, finite life.

I was drinking cocktails and lager, but it is Magnus Linklater’s history lesson about Gin Lane that provides an excuse for me to link to Clay Shirky’s excellent speech on Gin, Television, and Social Surplus. Shirky’s thesis is that television did for the late 20th Century what gin did for the 18th Century - it masked the sudden and inconvenient “social surplus” that new technologies had brought:

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation… And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today… It wasn’t until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom.

It is an important essay that is already being discussed online, so please do go and read the whole thing. Shirky goes onto describe how we actually have a vast amount of “cognitive surplus” - that is, spare thinking time - that is currently wasted watching TV sitcoms and adverts. He rails against those who ask “where do they find the time?” innorder to mock gamers and bloggers. Shirky points out that the whole Wikipedia project took about 100 million man hours to complete. Yet the USA watches 100 million man hours of advertisements, every weekend.

So perhaps society is behaving a bit like I was over the bank-holiday. Wasting time, horizontal, unwashed, in our pajamas, watching TV… when we should be doing something more creative. New technologies are slowly allowing us to unlock our potential.

Spam-mail celebrates its 30th Anniversary this week. The first piece of mass junk e-mail was sent three decades ago, to the 393 users of the Arapnet system, by a marketeer named Gary Thuerk.

On a related note, it is more than a decade since I personally introduced the concept of spam e-mailing to the innocent readers of The Times:

Tackling Junk Mail - 28th July 1997

From Mr Robert Sharp

Dear Sir, Sir Edward Peck complains of junk mail via his fax (letter, July 19).

I believe the newest form of junk mail is that received by e-mail. I have been “on line” for a matter of days, yet I have already recieved 11 unsolicited e-mails.

While this type of intrusion is perhaps the easiest to dispose of, my hopes are dashed when I find that the eagerly awaited “new mail” is only junk mail from the United States, advertising, for example, sunglasses.

Yours etc

Robert Sharp
July 19

Re-reading that letter, I see no mention of any formula to “make her faint when she sees your enormous schlong,” so I suppose I must have been fairly innocent too.

While waiting for the Wisconsin and Hawaii primary results to drip in, I thought I would have a look at the various presidential candidate websites:

• HillaryClinton.com
• MikeHuckabee.com
• JohnMcCain.com
• BarackObama.com

Its striking how similar they all are in layout. Indeed, the sites for Clinton, McCain and Obama are so alike I thought they might have been created using the same software, but this isn’t so. All have the candidates name and logo in the top-left corner of the site (in common with most websites these days), an e-mail sign-up form in the top-right, and a donate button right below that. All have horizontal menus, a three column layout, with a large graphic element accorss the first two columns, below the menu. While this might demonstrate to some people that the candidates are clones of one another, I’m inclined to see it as proof that all the politicians recognise the value of good design. Following a recognised and established layout allows users to navigate the site quickly and efficiently.

There is, I think, a cliche of the ‘Presidential Candidate Logo’. The surname, of course, coupled with the year digits and then some flag-like representation in red, white and blue. Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich come close, but its Hillary Clinton who takes the prize for the most obvious logo in the field. What’s quirky about Senator Clinton is that her logo is derived from her first name.
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Things are not going so well for the HMRC website, which is still experiencing problems. If it is not up and running soon, perhaps we citizens should invoice the tax-man £100 each for the hassle this will cause us.

It is admirable, I suppose, that the government at least attempts to engage with new technology. However, its approach is too ‘twentieth century’ for my liking. The kind of services it provides are what web developers would call Web 1.0 - that is, they resemble the very first generation of web services. Such services were (and in the HMRC case, still are) simply a direct electronic metaphors for other forms of communication. In the case of the tax return, you fill in the boxes in exactly the same way in which you would do so with a pen and paper… only it takes longer to do it online. You cannot make links with information from other places. Even if you have written or typed or calculated your figures elsewhere, you will still have to retype them into the governments forms.

This is quite inefficient. One great benefit of IT, is that one should never, ever have to type anything twice. Once an address exists in an electronic format somewhere, it should be possible to send that information elsewhere, without having to retype it. It is a measure of how small our technological steps are, that many people I know (and, dear reader, many people you know) still retype data, from one programme to another, and from one device to another. Even copying-and-pasting should be redundant by now (in favour of, say, drag-and-drop or even import/export), but still we persist with these old methods.

All that is required is a common format for data, that different types of computer (be it a PC, a laptop, a mobile phone, or a departmental number-cruncher) can read and understand. Sadly, this standardisation process is not yet complete. In the meantime, governments and companies each have to ask you for your data separately, so they can put it in their format and store it on their database. (more…)

A couple of ’social networking’ stories have been in the papers recently. First, Bilawal Bhutto’s Facebook profile has been mined by journalists, and certain Guardian readers think this may be unethical. Reader’s Editor Siobhain Butterworth discusses:

The fact that information is more or less publicly available may not be a complete answer to all arguments about privacy. Privacy is about intrusion rather than secrecy and the question is whether you have a reasonable expectation that something is private, rather than whether you have done or said something in public. These concepts are not easy to apply to social networking sites where the point of the exercise is to share information with others.

Meanwhile, its actually Bebo that has been crowned best social networking site by Which? Magazine:

The magazine said Facebook had a simple interface which made it easy to navigate. But it warned that the site had been marked down because its security settings could be confusing. “Our expert felt it was confusing to find out and change who can see what about you,” it said. “Plus, it wasn’t easy to find out how to permanently delete our account.”

These privacy and security issues are being cited as complicated perils that have no easy solution. It is as if Pandora’s Box has been opened and we cannot rein in the dangers now released, or keep a lid on the invasions of our identity. But I wonder whether the whole thing is just a product of bad design. If the software were structured slightly differently, we might not be grappling with these problems at all. Via Michelle at The Hive, we find this comment from Matt Jones:

“I know I’m biased but I wish people would just ditch/rethink so much of the default language around YASNSs, e.g. Pownce’s “Fan, Friend, ‘you denied friendship’. It’s so autistic. My preference is to describe what is happening to the information, not your relationships e.g. ’share messages with X’… A return to cybernetics, my “friends”

My emphasis. Michelle’s post makes some other interesting points about how Social Networking sites are constructed, so do read the whole thing.

There’s lots to say about yesterday’s new law, which prevents junk food from being advertised to children. However, I’m not particularly interested in the predictable ‘nanny state’ argument, which I am sure will surface elsewhere. Nor will I touch on the technicalities, which may well prove to be quite absurd.

First, I think that those who campaigned for the law may soon find that it is a hollow victory. For example, groups such as Netmums supported the legislation in order to protect their children. They reason that if the adverts for junk-food are banned, their children will be less predisposed to buy things that are unhealthy for them. Therefore (the logic goes) the kids are saved from an exploitation of sorts.

However, the unintended consequence of the ban is that TV channels will look for other advertisers to provide them with revenue. Yesterday we heard they had found such an income stream… from car manufacturers. By advertising to children, these new advertisers believe they can build up brand loyalty and demand amongst young people, who will be more likely to buy their product when they reach an age of majority. It’s the ultimate long term marketing strategy, yet has a sinister air to it, and I doubt the Netmums’ activists will be too happy with this alternative. And since we know that car adverts are the elusive sixth element, its all the more worrying - We just don’t know what effect early exposure will have on the extra-absorbent minds of our youngsters.

Second, the idea of an advertising ban seems outdated. The initial premise – that children are captive audiences – is becoming less true as technology develops. These days, TV audiences are able to bypass advertising on their way to content. I watched an entire series of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip on the More4 channel, without glimpsing any of the adverts: I used the fantastic Sky Plus features to fast-forward my way to the drama. I do enjoy my American TV shows, and I’ve managed to see three series of 24 and three of Lost, the first season of Prison Break and the entire West Wing canon, without troubling myself with ad-breaks. This is all because of DVD technology, only truly ubiquitous in the last few years. And when the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war is resolved, we’ll have even easier access to the best entertainment around, without concerning ourselves with advertisements.

Banning one particular ad genre seems slightly pointless, when the entire concept of TV ad-breaks is under threat. Concerned mothers and politicians should turn their attentions to cross-media marketing campaigns and product placement instead.

At the Social Market Foundation on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat Leadership Candidate Nick Clegg began a speech by outlining the technological context of 21st Century politics. It is a good approximation of my own view. He said:

… the innovations and technological advances that are already shaping and defining the 21st century – Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube – are about something very different: they are about creating the tools that will enable people to deliver services to each other.

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Sometimes its nice to return to those sites where one has left a comment, to see if anyone responded to it. Some blogs have a feature which notifies you when someone else responds. There is even a Web 2.0 application which does that job for you.

It was in such an act of trawling that I happened across a comment on Dave Hill’s post about the Amazon Kindle. The comment is a week old now, but still worth a response. Chip says:

I do fear that it would mark the death of novels in the way that MP3s are destroying the recording industry.

I think this is to mistake evolution for death. MP3s may be breaking the Music Industry’s current business model, but I see no reason why the model cannot change, to adapt to the new technology. At present, the way music is created and published is an anachronism. The standard album of about twelve tracks is a hang-over from the vinyl days - that was all you could fit on a 12 inch playing at 33 1/3 rpm. These days, since most music is released on CDs, you can fit a lot more than twelve three minute tracks onto an album. Double, in fact, yet the artists rarely use this free space.

Likewise with the three-and-a-half minute ’single’ track, so designed for convenient radio airplay. If, in the future, most music is advertised online (via MySpace, say, or Last.fm) then time constraints are less of an issue. Control is returned to the artist, who can play on for five or ten minutes if they feel the need, without being labeled ‘indulgent’.

So, the idea persists that a musician should produce a coherent body of work of about three-quarters of an hour, cut up into twelve tracks, and that they should do this about once every eighteen months or so. The costs involved in this (studio time, a big marketing drive, and maybe a tour) have to be recouped by the label. All these considerations feed into the business model… and when the income demanded by this business model is undercut by MP3 downloads and sales, the new technology is blamed for killing off an industry.

The way music is published clearly needs to change, and embrace the new digital formats. Instead of producing an album per year, why not simply release a new MP3 track each month, or each week, maybe as part of a podcast? This would actually be more interesting, since fans could observe the development of an artists style over a much longer period. If the artist publishes a blog, and maybe a dynamic playlist (”Currently listening to…”) then the fans will be able to engage with the artist and their work on a much deeper level. Its no longer a case of ‘the difficult second album’ so much as the ‘difficult second year’.

As computer software becomes better, and computer hardware becomes cheaper, publishing high-quality audio becomes easier too, meaning that more people can create music. It is no longer the preserve of the elite, in their ivory studios, backed by big labels. If production costs go down, then break-even points are much lower, and fewer sales are required in order to recoup costs. And by releasing fewer tracks at a time, but with greater frequency, musicians will see a quicker return, too.

Finally, this model should also foster greater creativity, and better music. A favourite essay of mine, by a digital artist named Momus, discusses this point at length: For something to be ‘mainstream’, he says, it necessarily needs to be generic. Artists have to smooth their edge if they wish to appeal to a diverse audience with its own tastes (A pop music track of any given era sounds much like any other pop music track from the same era. This is because they are all compromises, attempts on the middle-ground). However, in the digital age, the global audience is big enough that a small yet viable audience can be achieved without the compromises of ‘mainstream’. Musicians can find a fan base, and give it what it wants. Even better, with a weekly or monthly MP3 release, the cost of ‘flopping’ is greatly reduced, allowing more risk-taking, experimentation and collaboration.

The MP3 format may be killing the music industry, but it is also the stork of a new kind of social market for music, where the money is spread amongst a greater number of artists. The distribution and pricing models are not in place yet, but at least musicians are trying new methods. Radiohead offered fans the chance to pay whatever they felt like for In Rainbows. Prince gave away his latest album free with the Mail on Sunday.
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I enjoyed the story about a King Juan Carlos’ rant becoming a ring-tone hit in Spain and Venezuela. The King’s outburst came during a summit in Chile, after the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called Spain’s ex-Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, a “fascist”.

In Venezuela, a group of students who oppose Mr Chavez’s government have also been downloading the ringtone, a US newspaper reported.

“It’s a form of protest,” a 21-year-old student in Caracas told the Miami Herald. “It’s something that a lot of people would like to tell the president.”

It is yet another way in which the ubiquity and pervasiveness of technology undermines authoritarian power. In itself, it may not change or bring down a regime. It is, however, a form of protest and dissent that cannot be easily suppressed. It therefore emboldens, and gives succour to opposition.

While the internet can help spread campaigns, it can also undermine them. In 2003, Howard Dean looked set to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, until his infamous “Dean Scream” took the web by storm.

My post earlier today, regarding when to take up an argument, and when to let it go, was really just a preamble to a response to Neil Clark’s article on Comment is Free (via Sunny at LC).

Anyone who deviated from the official party line - as laid down by a self-appointed uber elite of British bloggers - faced a cyberspace lynch mob, more in keeping with Nazi Germany than a country which is supposed to pride itself on its support for free speech.

For the self-appointed uber elite of British political bloggers, the fact that someone, not of their number, and who did defy their three line-whip on the Iraqi interpreters issue - was nominated - and then won, in a free public vote, the title of “Best UK Blog” in the most prestigious prize in blogging, is too much to bear.

In the case of the Iraqi interpreters campaign, “self-appointed” we may be. The very nature of single-issue pressure groups is that they consist of people who stand up for a cause they believe in, filling a void that is not being filled by other organisations or political parties. We have certainly never claimed a democratic mandate, or to speak for anyone other than ourselves. The campaign gains its authority, and support, entirely from the strong arguments we have made in favour of the Iraqi interpreters.

Neil’s post on Friday matters, and is deserving of a response and a criticism, because he misunderstands, or perhaps misrepresents, the nature of the debate. The outcry that followed his “Iraqi Quislings” issue was not some orchestrated, strategic smear. It was not the fact that he had crossed or questioned the party line that raised hackles. Rather, it was the reactionary and ill-considered manner of his objections which provoked a response. Bloggers from the campaign were right to vigorously defend their stance, and should not be criticised for doing so. It is a shame that Neil now chooses to ignore the substantive points in the arguments, and instead retreat to ad hominems that so readily invoke Nazi Germany. It is odd that someone who has just won a best blogger online poll, should immediately resort to such a discredited line of attack. As Sunny says: bizarre.

Update

Unity, another self-appointed uber-liberal uber-blogger, takes a fisk to Neil’s article. Given my comments above and earlier today, I suppose I should say that I do wonder at the efficacy of ‘fisking’. I fear it will simply provoke more of the wrong sort of debate.

Again, I ask: At what point should the arguments-about-the-arguments be abandoned? To resort to ridicule and satire is slightly frustrating, I feel, because at that point the attempt to convince your correspondent blogger (and their own dedicated readers) will fail.