Disqus - Latest Comments for jeffjarvis

Re: No, Trump did not win 'fair and square'

Jeff Jarvis — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 03:19:24 -0000

Pssst. FBI director.

Re: The antidote for fake news? Better journalism

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 21:36:49 -0000

Did you really need to lead with the caveat?

Re: Would You Pay For News?

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 09:11:29 -0000

From my book:

In Adam Smith’s paradox of value, he wondered why, if water is vital to life and diamonds are not, diamonds are worth so much more than water. The pricing paradox of information presents a similar quandary: If information is so much more valuable to society than entertainment, why is it so hard to build a business — namely, journalism — around selling access to information? Journalism at its most useful is information-rich but information is quickly commodified. Entertainment, on the other hand, is unique and engaging and...receives greater legal protection under copyright than information does. We have conflated journalism as an information business with entertainment as an engagement business in large part because both are are built on “stories.”

Information is less valuable in the market because it flows freely. Once a bit of information, a fact, appears in a newspaper, it can be repeated and spread, citizen to citizen, TV anchor to audience: “Oyez, oyez, oyez” shouts the town crier. “The king is dead. Long live the king. Pass it on.” Information itself cannot and must not be owned. Under copyright law, a creator cannot protect ownership of underlying facts or knowledge, only of their treatment. That is, you cannot copyright the fact that the Higgs boson was discovered at CERN in 2012, you can copyright only your treatment of that information: your cogent backgrounder or natty graphic that explains WTF a boson is. A well-informed society must protect and celebrate the easy sharing of information even if that does support freeloaders like TV news, which build businesses on the repetition of information others have uncovered. Society cannot find itself in a position in which information is property to be owned, for then the authorities will tell some people — whether they are academics or scientists or students or citizens — what they are not allowed to know because they didn’t buy permission to know it. Therein lies a fundamental flaw in the presumption that the public should and will pay for access to information — a fundamental flaw in the business model of journalism. I’m not saying that information wants to be free. I agree that information often is expensive to gather. Instead I am saying that the mission of journalism is to inform society by unlocking and spreading information. Journalism frees information.
The rest: https://medium.com/geeks-be...

Re: Land, Capital, Attention: This Time it Is the Same

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 01 Nov 2015 08:59:19 -0000

Excellent, Albert. I wonder whether the next wave is not a scarcity at all but grappling with abundance: a lack of scarcities to rule the economy and our political structure.
That I can sit in my self-driving car and read or think going nowhere in particular because I don't have or need a job does not necessarily create economic value worth fighting over for others -- except in the case of making money off me by selling me content (an outmoded institution, I agree, that goes away as there, too, we have an abundance of us entertaining each other) or exposing me to marketing to sell me stuff (but in a public-controlled media ecosystem -- the start of which we see with adblocking -- I might only volunteer for such communication and might not need to suffer it with my time).
Need there be a scarcity? I'm not sure.
As you so adeptly point out, these revolutions overlap: Even as the technological revolution was in full flower, we still fought the last great war (one hopes) of the agrarian society. Even as the industrial revolution is still catching up to some parts of the world and taking its damned time doing so, we are entering this next revolution. So, of course, there will be much scarcity in too much of the world still.
But for the privileged -- us; those who have already benefited fully from these first revolutions -- I'm not sure we will suffer scarcity. Unless you are Elon Musk, you likely will have an abundance of time, which you will have many ways to fill. Time is the abundance each of these revolutions *caused.* No longer needing to hunt meant we had the time to build a society; no longer needing to farm meant we had the time to build a culture. No longer needing to work will give us not a scarcity but a next abundance of time to ... to do what?
That, it strikes me, is the real question. Clay Shirky would have us know that we can make countless Wikipedias. Will we be generous creators or selfish sloths? I'll take the optimistic side of that question, all in all, but there's no way to know.
The real question for me then is how the old institutions -- the economy, the political structure, the old educational structure, old media -- will grapple with the lack of a need to fight over scarcities. They will be as outmoded as the aristocracy became (read a great book on this: The Institutional Revolution -- http://amzn.to/1P4pxDF ).
I and even you are too old to know how this will turn out. Your first point is exactly right: This could be a millennial moment.

Re: Aaron Sorkin and the Technological Arts

Jeff Jarvis — Thu, 15 Oct 2015 16:09:47 -0000

Bingo, mgabrys.

Re: Forget about the mobile internet

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 09:33:49 -0000

Yes. Mobile -- and Facebook's and Google's adaptations to it -- taught me that in my business, media, we must stop thinking that mobile is just another content delivery platform. No, mobile teaches us to look at our services in terms of our customers' use cases. I wrote a chapter of my recent book about just that: https://medium.com/geeks-be...

Re: Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

Jeff Jarvis — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 15:06:42 -0000

And The Times did a bit of that article the next day, saying that -- hmmm -- work sucks at many companies.

Re: Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 12:08:44 -0000

Exactly. Seeing journalism as process, what you describe should be the goal: The first piece smokes out the second: "We hear this about working at Amazon. We found some of what we heard to be true. But we couldn't hear from enough people. So we are putting this incomplete view out to learn more."

Re: Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:03:13 -0000

I could not disagree more strongly. In the end, it is not up to journalists to decide for us. It is up to journalists to inform us so we may better decide. Always been. Always will be. That's one of the eternal verities.

Re: Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:01:34 -0000

In both cases, data would indeed be much better than anecdote -- as an Amazonian would say.

Re: Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:00:28 -0000

Who is to say that the things people get there are not important? Amazon is changing huge industries: retail, logistics, cloud computing. They are doing big things. Whether you like the way they do it is another question. But pooh-poohing it as delivering swim goggles is just snarky nonsense. And, BTW, when your kid is on the swim team, those goggles can be damned important to her.

Re: Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 09:57:50 -0000

Thanks for your insight, Steve.

Re: Playing leapfrog and werewolf with Google and Facebook

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 17 May 2015 17:43:25 -0000

Oh, right. Thanks.

Re: Who needs edittors?

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 22 Mar 2015 13:49:02 -0000

Well, then, I'm glad you're not my editor. That's precisely why I like blogs. No editors.

Re: What I Write About And What I Don’t

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 10:11:44 -0000

How can you generously share the lessons you learn without the context in which you learn them?
I'm just glad you're not writing about music so much. ;-)

Re: What I Write About And What I Don’t

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 10:07:16 -0000

But never feed the trolls.

Re: Audio Storytelling

Jeff Jarvis — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 10:36:36 -0000

There's another factor in the success of both Serial and Vice, I think: transparency. They show how the sausage is made. Turns out it's not only revelatory but also engaging.

Re: The Emerging Architecture Of Internet Applications

Jeff Jarvis — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 11:34:51 -0000

There's another question: Where's the money saved? Where's the open-source dividend? Where is efficiency created? Where is friction eliminated? Where are middlemen murdered? Don't just follow money creation. Follow money savings.

Re: The Emerging Architecture Of Internet Applications

Jeff Jarvis — Tue, 25 Nov 2014 11:34:07 -0000

Yes, people still read books. If you'd like to build a future business based on that, more power to you.

Re: Copyright v creditright

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 18 Aug 2014 09:14:52 -0000

It's not at all about depriving artists of compensation but instead assuring that they can receive compensation in more ways.
And "idiotic concept" is not a great way to begin a decent discussion, don't you think? I'd that's an idiotic concept in and of itself.

Re: What society are we building here?

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 13:23:12 -0000

What say you, Rurik, to the good suggestion of your blurbing hero, Jason Pontin: Change the name. You are impersonating me with my full name and no indication that it is fake and using my real identity to troll others and affect my reputation as a result. Change the name. Oh, and get a life, too.

Re: What society are we building here?

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 13:21:32 -0000

I've not asked for it to be deleted. I've asked for him to stop impersonating me and trolling others while doing so.

Re: What society are we building here?

Jeff Jarvis — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 13:21:08 -0000

I didn't fill it out. I didn't know it existed. It's called sharing.

Re: What society are we building here?

Jeff Jarvis — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:52:29 -0000

I'm not asking anyone to censor it. I am asking its creator to be reasonable and not use my identity to attack people I respect. That's not a lot to *ask*.

Re: What society are we building here?

Jeff Jarvis — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 15:58:43 -0000

Rurik,

Well, there you are.

Get your facts straight. I recall you dropping that ball.

And I did not follow you. I do not follow you. You follow me; that's what enabled me to DM you.

What is possibly "threatening" about this message, and I quote, in full: "You have crossed the line. Enough."

You have crossed the line. You have affected my reputation with people I know. Those people should not be expected to perform a content analysis of your drive-by attack on them to determine who this really is. You are using my identity to harm my reputation.

And I've fucking had enough of it. You've had your fun, mate. You have your blurbs from Jason Pontin. (Wow!) Can't you retire now?

Think for a moment what it's like for me with you using my identity for two and a half years and 17k tweets. Just try, eh?

I work hard. I try to do good. I teach and research for what I think are good ends. I put up with your humorless humor for two and a half years. But now you're trolling other people under my identity.

Enough.

Get your own life.