DISQUS

I bet that just behind that wall of high priced glass a kid with a cell phone is snapping the most compelling shot in the arena.

I'd love to be able to see the contact sheets for that entire group... 10,000 shots of Michael Phelps all from the same angle... amazing productivity.

Interesting post. I've been reading The Black Swan and it has readjusted my whole idea of history. In it Taleb dwells on something he refers to as "the cemetery of silent evidence" - all the stuff that history has forgotten either because of the destruction or obscurity of the original artifact.

Essentially, what you are worried about has always been... we always have lost and always will lose bits of "us" as time progresses. The funny thing is that the future won't care... it will route around the loss and construct it's history based on what has survived. History doesn't represent truth or accuracy as much as represents our current perspective.

I think at some basic level we all understand this and that is what drives the angst you're feeling. We all want to remembered as we are... we all want the truth of this whole thing to sustain. We all want future history to be as accurate as possible. Yet we know instinctively it's just not possible.

I don't like the idea of auto posting to twitter. For me twitter is always best when there is some personality behind the conversation. What makes twitter great is the call and response, not just the call.

That being said, if you have something on your blog that you think would be of benefit to a conversation on twitter then go ahead link to it... as long as you stick around for a bit to entertain any conversation that might ensue.

Bottom line - every tweet is an invitation to a conversation... it's bad form to send out an invitation to a conversation that has no hope of existing.

(Did I use "conversation" enough?)

Slight factual error in the post... Ze Frank is actually the leader of the Blue Team and the overlord of the whole color wars meme. Gary Vaynerchuck is the one who built on Z's idea and has made it the widespread virus it is. He is also the prime mover of the VERY Green Team - a team of which I am a member.

What the wars will ultimately become rests with Z - he is the originator and as far as I am concerned what he says goes and this is the last thing he has said on the subject:

http://twitter.com/zefrank/statuses/774130637

I, for one, am waiting patiently with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.

Marcus-
I think we are definitely in the same camp.

I may beat on digital magazines too much... I don't mean to. I do like the idea and the technology, but as you yourself say they are hardly the only way forward for magazine publishers.

I do think that they may be getting a bit more play than they should because it is so familiar to publishers... the idea of the contained issue with edit bumping up against ads... it's comfortable.

It's that comfort level that has got to change. I think that if you are publishing a magazine today and you are comfortable with where your digital business model is then you are in serious trouble.

dude... tried Amazon yet? their downloader is like emusic's original, but with itunes (or other player) integration... don't know about a Linux version though.

Bo-
I think we are definitely barking up the same tree... we're just focused on different branches. Believe me I do understand that "publishers now have many ways to use their collective franchise of content" - that is sort of a basic theme in my post. Those ways are going to gain in influence and value, slowly outshining the linear print experience.

Where we differ - and this is purely a matter of speculation - is that I just don't see linearity holding its value in the digital world. The idea of beginning, middle, end is not so much a core trait of the magazine as it is of the print medium. Unfortunately linearity isn't a core trait of digital information. Digital natives just won't/don't relish it the same way you and I do. The way they interact with information is fundamentally different than the ways in which the preceding generations have. For them, the last 600 years don't really mean squat. Young minds are being patterned by network and publishers who hope to speak with them must understand and publish inside that pattern.

We are indeed witnessing unprecedented changes in in technology that are having a profound effect on publishing... there's no real telling how it will play out... what devices and technologies will become the new standards... the new paper. In light of that, do you really think it's wise to try and force the outline of the old medium onto the youthful and evolving bones of the new?

True, the first incarnation of this will look a little like the corporate monoculture you describe, but there is tremendous opportunity here. IF Apple would open this up to anybody then I could see this being a great new way to distribute any kind of music in any kind of public space. Just replace Starbucks with your favorite indie hotspot or underground jazz club and you begin to see what I'm getting at.

So... Imagine I own a club, or a cafe, or a bar and I have my music served up via a local install of itunes that also broadcasts the playlist to all iPods in the house. You as customer hear what you like and buy it via itunes and I as owner get a share of the sale.

Obviously a whole slew of DRM, copyright and pricing issues would have to be resolved, but it is definitely possible.

The idea of weighting seems like it would get us a little closer in principle, but I guess what I am fantasizing on is something that intuits what I am feeling... some sort of biotech perhaps?

Jeff- my point is that the main reason your friends on MySpace aren't really interested in anything else is because moving their entire online social life from here to there is just too much work. If you eliminate that work - or make easy enough I bet the would start moving around the social web the same way they might try new restaurants or new stores or new bars...

"...educating the average MySpace user on the issue is a little trickier, and may be an insurmountable task."

Really? I would think that the "average MySpace user" would welcome anything that makes their life easier. The only trick is making it dead simple to understand. Something along the lines of "dude, it'll make you type less" would probably work.

After all if there is one thing that MySpacers have an innate grasp on it is the transience of social cliques... so if you make them understand that this will make that transition easy (effortless really) then the task becomes totally surmountable.

I expect more push-back from site owners... they're the ones who have the most to gain by keeping people locked inside all of these "walled gardens" we keep hearing about. They look at all that data as "theirs" and the possession of it as competitive advantage... changing THAT attitude really may be an insurmountable task.

It's a bet... but how are you defining "kicking"? There may be a few hold outs printing daily, but it will no longer be a viable business model on the scale it is today... agreed?

It came out great... keep up the good work! The world needs it's art.

Yeah... that's the gold in this video. Right there you see how people are conditioned to revere the art object and then, as it sinks in, they search and find meaning... it must be interactive.

No... if you run the numbers going solar has been prohibitively expensive... the only thing it would save is the planet and that just isn't what corporations are interested in doing. Alternative energy is only now starting to become competitive with traditional power in terms of cost and NOW we are starting to see corporations like Wal-Mart commit to it. It will take a few years, but big corporations will slowly go green and go Linux... the finance departments will demand it.

They can and will change... it comes down to money. Now that Linux is actually easier for a tech novice to use than Windows and the cost of ownership for companies is so much lower you will start to see movement away from Windows. Tell a CEO he can save millions of dollars by switching to a FREE OS and watch how fast things change.

Fuck Zod... he's a big part of what happened in that bar... the one across the street.

hmmmmm.... Dave gets a new toy... hasn't been to work for two days.

EXACTLY!!!!

I guess that's another way to say hello?

I feel you on that, but isn't socialism just letting these same fucked up politicos have a bigger stake in everything?

Hello.

I don't know if they'll go to church or just say they're going to church to try and court the church vote.

Once you start using TiVO you really can't go back... it sucks you in like quicksand and you start watching all kinds of tv.