Missed Manners

Cosmo Kramer just barged in on Jerry again. Where does he think he is? That tweet was ALL IN CAPS. Please don’t shout! Some joker hacked my site and inserted “funny pictures” (“Oops, sorry: my mistake”—Rep. Weiner).

Why do otherwise normal people act like savages in cyberspaces? Where do they think they are? Anyway?

The old saying,”When in Rome, do as the Romans do” doesn’t seem to apply when everyone else seems to be roamin’ aimlessly in a nowhere land.

In the early days of programming—say, when someone was Beta testing in Basic--a novice user could drive his curser out of the program and land in a dead space on the screen where no rule seemed to apply, and the only escape was a hard reboot. Some savvy mentor gently had to lead that person back to the land of legitimate keystrokes and commands—help to put his mouse back into the running.

People who travel to foreign lands act like that lost cursor, too. Not knowing the local customs, when they intrude into some fabled exotic civilization, they adopt clothing styles they never would be seen in at home, and act abominably—shouting at the locals who don’t seem to understand plain English.

Now, of course, we have Rosetta Stone.

People who flame others online exhibit poor “Netiquette.” The need for a Miss Manners became extreme when everybody swarmed into the Internet and clogged the information superhighways, letting it all hang out: Whoopee! Express yourself anonymously! Spill whatever is on your chest and get it off!

The problem is, what belongs to everyone ends up belonging to no one. And people assume that there are no rules that apply there in Nowhere Land. But “Nature abhors a vacuum.” There are those who are ready to step up and try to apply remedies.

Now, for example, the big providers all make us sign contracts agreeing to behave ourselves on line. However, not all of us have honored our promises to behave. Some Cosmos still have the habit of snooping in other people’s mail, running up charges on other people’s credit, sending anonymous threats and fake promises, or short-sheeting other people’s Net sites as a form of recreation. So now should we worry if Big Brother is also Big Nosy-Parker, tracking our every misstep?

Where’s the fun in that?

Of course, if you live in glass (or silicon) houses, rock-tossing is an ill-advised recreation. It behooves us to learn to govern ourselves, lest someone else decides to step in and do it for us.

K.I.S.

Formats R getting shorter.

People are swamped. Messages must grab them, or they won’t read the rest.

Say one thing, or two; in 144 characters.

In short: be brief.

K?

Saul's Armor

A friend--who is a professional musician--commented to me, “You can’t just be a musician anymore—you need to know how to market yourself on the Internet.”

He went on to explain how much effort it takes to write a website—and how cumbersome it is to make any modifications in your existing one. You also need to create a presence on the social media such as Youtube, LinkdIn, etc. and create a lot of cross-links to bring your site higher on the search engines’ queue, so when people Google or Bing for music, your sites are near the first page of hits.

And not just music. You need multiple sites, offering focused services, like:
your consulting service, your instrument sales, your albums, etc. that cross-link with your Facebook, your Twitter, Your SMS, your QR, your Blogspot. Your site citations also, which you have embedded in your text so random queries for certain strings will pull up your page and create awareness—all of these are new tricks that a content provider must learn in order to have a decent competitive chance.

There is also a huge learning curve involved. Not everyone can climb that curve. Skill sets needed for production of content are multiplying like rabbits. Can you do animation or do you need to add more plug-ins that can spice up your sites to get you noticed among the maddering crowds that clog the information superhighways?

And don’t get me started on managing your sites. You need to keep abreast of search engine reconfigurations and how they will impact the number of hits your site generates. You may have to rebuild periodically to keep up with innovations in software, new viruses, new hacker attacks, zombies, malware, sabotage. Even popularity has its perils—when your site gets so many hits, does it crash and leave you non-functional? Are you a target of a competitor's dirty tricks?

Whole industries are blooming that provide a dizzying array of services-–many offered by other working stiffs like yourself in the new cottage industry of innovation. Can you position yourself as a provider of a niche product?

Everybody, it seems, is getting to be a content provider--provided they can bear to assume the panoply of paraphernalia needed to wage the good campaign in the moil and clamor of the electronic marketplace.

Can you even keep current? Media are being created daily. Old utilities are constantly being redesigned. E-mail is already dinosaur-like, even as it supplanted snail mail and telephones. (BTW there’s always new lingo: you are constantly learning new acronyms, new codes with meaningless strings of characters that can sink you if one keystroke is out of place.)

And the demand is like a vast black hole: you keep producing in order to keep in the mix. You have to keep running--like the Red Queen--to keep in place.

Cumbersome? It's the price of doing business. The question is--how much energy do you invest before the point of diminishing returns is passed? There is a steep attrition curve. Those with the resources to meet these challenges have a competitive advantage--until the field evolves in some new, unforeseen modality.

Anyone who contemplates entering the fray should weigh the cost carefully. Consider whether you can carry through.

Where It's At

There was a time in adolescence when everyone knew where the "gut" would be on Friday night. The Scene was the local drive-in and the crowd took the opportunity to cruise the Gut. Teens would congregate along an avenue in their cool rides and promenade to see and be seen. The urge toward identifying with a tribe is primal. Having a central connection, a place of belonging, anchors the self in a social context.
So it now is social media that provide the avenues for cruising and hanging out.Before the Internet, before TV, before telephones, before telegraphs—in the face-to-face world of our ancestors, getting together was very localized. Of course, long-range connections took place, but the means were cumbersome. Delay was intrinsic--you sent a message or wrote a letter if the other parties were distant, or you footed it to your friends' place to hang out if they were near. Your circle of closeness was limited.
Now we have Instant Messaging, tweeting, chatting online and virtual conferencing. Even a millisecond delay annoys us. We expect to stay connected constantly; hence the need to ban texting while driving and the need to warn pedestrians about the dangers of listening to loud i-pods and oblivious wandering into traffic while using one’s cell to "stay connected."
Certainly new possibilities come from being hooked in:
• You can participate in flash mobs and find out about raves (where you can experience actual injury and/or infection).
• You can indulge your habits and hobbies in a community of similar interests.
• You can even live an alternate existence in a fantasy world (but consequences have ways of finding you).
But now the world is ever with us, overwhelmingly like a flood, and our need to define ourselves by a set or circle of interests is more urgent than ever.
Now we live in a mega-world where we begin to feel lost unless we tribe up with a community of similar interest. For example, we can see how, despite the huge population, New York city subway riders are not a huge undifferentiated mass: every car has a casual community of commuters who daily travel together, share pictures of their kids, and connect on a regular basis. The Scene is a predictable social opportunity with people you know.
The same thing happens on electronic media: people connect in order to define themselves as part of--or in contrast to-- some community. In a way, the prevalence of more communication channels drives people to a greater sense of need to define their circle more narrowly and to cluster together more tightly.
To stretch the analogy--in a flood, all sorts will cling to the closest raft; and in the surging seas of information surrounding us currently, we find ourselves all in the same boat.

Seeing Isn’t Believing

Whose eye provides the image that you see?
The professional or the amateur photographer is already motivated to share the personal vision of the world that draws him or her. Photographers show others how something appears through their eyes. The choices of subjects depend on their unique point of view.
How their images get to us depends on who sees value in the image and transmits it to some defined segment of the public.
Example:
This photographer has an interest in public art, and determined to spend part of a day taking images at Salem Oregon's Capitol grounds. There is a historical connection and a nexus with the current environment or context of specific pieces of public art that have been sited on the communal ground. There is a symbolism.
I looked for good light conditions, I sought a natural frame for my subject that focused on what feeling and structure could be revealed.
I chose a statue in a quiet nook of the park of the Circuit Rider. It was an homage to pioneer missionaries and their role in the establishment of American culture and political control in Oregon country.
I framed the rider looking up, for a feeling of respect. He rides between twin lightposts--reader can infer symbolic value and attribute or project personal meaning on the image. Behind him are Commerce Building, to the left is Supreme Court of Oregon building. Oregonian viewers would recognize them and react to their social significance in relation to the central figure of the Rider.There is room for the viewer to construct a meaningful story by the juxtaposition of these elements.

There are compositional devices, considerations of image quality, lens used, etc. All these are means to an end. Strong sunlight lends drama; green trees and grass soften the scene in a nostalgic way.
Still, the original image had some elements that, in the photographer's opinion, distracted from the central message. That's why a photo-editing software exists.
I used Photoshop(TM) to manipulate the raw picture into a finished(*maybe tweak it some more) image.
So I created a cameo effect, tightening up on the salient features and also adding a nostalgic frame.

I also added my copyright notice--though this is covered by copyright laws, some people forget to honor those protections, and I have a product to protect. And this is a big problem for professionals posting to the internet.
The motive of potential customers and salable applications colors the choices made at every point.
But what else did I change from the original image?
What didn't show in the final product?
Depending on your value system, the image of a trash can either is a distraction from the noble tone of the Circuit Rider, or it is an elegy to the positive social value of Recycling as a contrast to the old social structures of the Pioneer, Commerce, and the American System.
This photographer has made an editorial choice of what to show--and what not to show.

"Nothing Between"

In my last post, I rambled with an extended metaphor about how the Media are channels between the "out there" and the "here" for us, the consumers of messages that flow through them. Obviously, I left out a lot of detail and smushed some ideas so as to fit into that conceit.
That's what we do. Every message, every perception we humans log is filtered before it gets perceived by our minds, let alone logged into our memory banks. And don't get me started on the challenge of accurately retrieving those memories!
The myth of "immediacy" lures us into thinking that if I see it "live" I am right there seeing it as it really happens. Bosh.
For one thing, there is a seven-second delay in the "live" feed that allows the Studio Editor to cut or bleep any content that violates FCC regulations.( Not all Authority is a bad thing). Some would argue that falsifies reality. That brings us to the Internet and "uncensored" streaming content.
But there is a selectivity principle at work here. "Hot" news leads, and boring everyday stuff ends up on the cutting room floor. Sexy sites pass on wholesome content unless they can show it in a sexy way for their audience. Every source has a voice: not every voice gets heard. What were they doing just before they went to the live podcast? Were they paid to stage this "punking? Did some starlet's agent arrange this escapade? "No such thing as bad publicity" is the credo of the PR department.
Spontaneous opinions and interviews on news programs with the makers of new products, happy talk about a local bakery, coverage of Santa base jumping from Sears tower--all these events happen in a "See it now" format. What does this do for our trust in the messenger--and the message?
Haste in reporting the latest buzz also makes a waste of time for the media-sated audience. When something really is happening, how do we discern if it is a real event?
September 11, 2001 was a sequence of images that many thought at first was a clip from some disaster movie--until we realized it was actually happening. President Bush wasn't the only one who sat in puzzled silence for moments before realizing a crisis had really emerged.
When we are bombarded with "immediate" flashes of pseudonews, are we becoming impaired at recognizing--and responding--to true needs?
Just asking.

In Media Res

In Media Res is a term that means "In the very act" and it is relevant to explore some etymology to start off today's rant.
 The Latin stem "media" can mean "in between" or "amid." The implication of calling someone a "medium" is that person is a channel between distinctly different entities: invisible spirits and flesh-and-blood relatives still on earth.. Whatever may be known of the Other Side is mediated through the putative connection that person has with, and ability to transmit from that world to ours. Most of us carry a healthy skepticism of the messages claimed to come through that agency.
Our modern Media --radio, television, print, electronic, etc--direct something from one place to another. Like the old Roman aqueducts, there is an elaborate interlocking system set up that delivers information from some Source high up and far away to our homes for our convenience and consumption. We trust the Keepers of this system to keep our potables pure and useful. We even carry the metaphor further by calling them TV channels (canali).
Now, channels are useful things . High banks, such as levees, contain the flow and direct it so it doesn't overwhelm productive areas with destructive floods and so commerce can proceed along dependable routes and goods and services get delivered. When they breach, everybody suffers--floods go everywhere, and there is mass confusion: authorities step in and take extreme measures. We don't welcome that. Someone,  or many someones make the system flow as efficiently as they desire and as we expect. They keep their eyes on every aspect, control the gates as needed, even dam up and release portions of what goes through to maintain functionality.
This is a rough analogy with how the traditional media operate as well. Sources are numerous, but the Someones who gather the news have definite collection channels and clear ideas on what is or isn't news and methods of capturing and packaging what they gather in ways calculated to be accepted into the system and sent on to gatekeepers--editors, producers, bureau chiefs, etc. These Someones decide what goes further into the channels of distribution, how it's packaged or bottled, and send it on to other Someones who actually deliver the information.
And we, the audience, are the consumers of their product. We trust the Someone whose all-seeing Eye has found out for us what we cannot directly see for ourselves, and has mediated it to us through highly-developed channels for our convenience and consumption.
Another metaphor applies to one of the media in particular: the "far-seer"(television), exemplified by the Big Eye network, for example. One of their famous Someones was once known as the Man Everybody Trusts, and he was the face and voice that talked us through assassinations, space launches and tragedies. He symbolized for us the Reliable Intermediary, whose integrity and truthfulness was impeccable. Gradually, we became aware that our fond projection onto him of our desire for certitude was misplaced: he was just another human like the rest of us, and his fellow Someones had feet of clay as well (and clay muddies the water!).
The social media began to chip away at the traditional channels: little channels were let into the dikes and levees, and at the same time more and more streams of information flowed into the system, overloading it, and causing breakdowns in the control system. All the waters were going everywhere, and with the water came a lot of mud, and roiling debris, and whatnot. Still, there seems to be enough to float everyone's boat--for now.
But now the New Media see the Old Media with many new eyes. Some distrust the messages they can see in their home palantir (Far-seer) sets: the Big Eye and his ilk are losing market share; masses of seekers are rallying to different streams for their personal refreshment and use. But still, everything is mediated through the eyes of Someone--only now it is many someones, and they are mostly anonymous.
Who knows when some Authority may become alarmed enough to try to do something?

"The whole world is watching" was a rally cry of one mass movement in the recent past. We were shown what the cameras saw. The images we saw were chosen by Someone and sent on through gates by other Someones, then delivered to us by well-dressed, coiffed and made-up Someones we trusted.
There are questions we need to ask: Through Whose eyes are we seeing what we see? Can we trust these Messages from beyond? Can we trust the New Media any better? Can we drink in what we see without first checking for what may be suspended in it?

Branded for life

The Old West cattlemen realized they needed to keep track of stock to prevent inventory loss and to receive their proper returns when it was taken to market, so they applied a hot iron to the backside of each dogie with their unique (and registered) logo. This way, they were assured of a revenue stream as they were moving their product to consumers via multiple modalities: Chisholm trail,  Union Pacific, stockyards, Chicago Stock Exchange.
Branding still is done, but by a strange alchemy, the ownership no longer is fastened on the bull that is shipped, but onto the one who is counted on to consume it. The consumer of their product is "claimed" by the outfit that is most skilled at corraling him into a habit of dependence on their brand in preference to all other bulls.
Those people who fix on one brand become part of a "tribe" whose behavior can be counted on to support and reward the company that provides them the product. Tribal membership has its benefits for those who accept being branded into a particular outfit's offerings. There are Tee shirts to wear, rewards for loyal repeat purchase of goods and services, special events to take part in. These are tangible incentives. But the intangible incentives go deeper.
Tribal members gain a sense of meaningful connection with a community of like-minded people, whose shared values are seen and embodied in the products offered under that brand. "I'm a Pepper, you're a Pepper..." unless you're part of the "Pepsi generation" today; or do you hang with the homies and drink Sprite?
Even after the product no longer is offered, brand loyalty lives on in a totemic sense among the members of a tribe. Volkswagen Beetle clubs  were so powerful as a popular movement that the company had to re-envision the Beetle and open new factories to meet the demand. Harley-Davidson is still alive mainly because of the enthusiasm on a gut level with the American-made, rugged image despite strong competition from Japanese brands which get better reviews.
Perception of value ascribed to the product is transmuted by osmosis to its acolytes and adherents. They are self-described as "owned" by the brand. Volvo owners are perceived as a definable market segment. Other products then can be shaped to attract their custom--products that tap on their shared value system and exploit them as a source of corporate livelihood.
Those who cater to these people have an allegiance to their  interests only so far as there's something useful to the provider's maintaining profit, influence, power.  Hopefully, this will not be their highest allegiance.
Hopefully, we remember not to let the brand own us.

Getting hip to the media

Monday, I launched into the internet blogosphere for the first time.
Just coping with the mechanics of getting online accounts tells me that access is step one.
I and a helper struggled to get my electronic portal up and running. The paraphernalia of the electronic age is an automatic gatekeeper that weeds out those without internet access skills or tools. So the audience is pre-selected.
This creates a hidden bias in that the universe of potential interactors culls out voices that cannot meet a threshold level of sophistication.
For providers of content and purveyors of products, this performs a valuable sifting tool. When I worked the phone lines, we had "cold" calls--unselected, random targets a computer pulled from the phone directory(preselected pool) or even wider group of telephone numbers generated at random by an algorithm. These were low-percentage sales opportunities, and generated a lot of negative reaction on the recipients' part.
"Warm" calls were selected from a list of people who had some prior contact with the organization.They generated nicer responses and more sales.
But the universe of potential interactors was limited by those who had access to a phone. For the agency that did the phone calling, those not owning a phone not only were unavailable:they did not exist.
Access means potential participation. Access to internet depends on factors not obvious to those who already are participants. If for some reason, a person's TV doesn't receive your broadcast, he  is not in reach of your presentation and it is possible he doesn't know you exist, either!
Thinking outside the bubble of your own circle of interaction demands creativity; it also demands humility to realize that your circle is not "all that."
If you have a message, keep in mind that there are those out there that you do not see.