Why print is dead
I've spent way too much time today reading the website / blog of Dave Winer, the inventor of modern RSS and podcasting, and one of the earliest bloggers. His site has been operational as a blog since 1997, and his archives date back to 1994 — probably something you could classify as a blog despite the lack of the term in those early days of the web. And he's got many key moments in the web's evolution recorded. Watching the web evolve over the last fifteen years has been roughly equivalent to watching civilization progress from the Bronze Age to the early days of spaceflight.
Winer's site is one of those I stumble across now and again, but not one I regularly follow. That's not because it's not interesting. It is interesting... plenty of good stuff to be found there, a good bit of it related to blogging, media creation, and technology — but certainly not all of it.
One of the area bloggers recently referred to me as "new" to the scene. I chuckled at that characterization and was not offended by it in the slightest. Because in some sense, aren't we all somewhat "new" to the scene? Sure, there's a history to blogging, but it's not a very long one in terms of what it really is — another means of communication. Though it is a revolutionary one, as revolutionary as the printing press, maybe more since literally anyone can do it. The printing press emerged in 1454, about 550 years before blogs became popular enough that mainstream media sat up and paid attention.
Which brings me to the topic of social media experts. I have a bad habit of pointing out when the emperor is wearing no clothes, and even though that usually pisses off the emperor, I do it anyway. Whether or not this is one of those instances remains to be seen, I guess, but I have a funny feeling it might be.
Can somebody please define the phrase "social media expert" for me? Is it even possible to be an expert in a field which is less than a decade old? If so, what are some examples of credentials which could make it possible?
I submit that content is king — always has been, always will be. But people don't want stale content, which is why traditional print newspapers and magazines are struggling. Anything involving fusing carbon particles onto wood pulp will be instantly dated, even more so if it takes 24 hours, a week, a month to get it delivered to the information consuming public. It's not a matter of getting more advertising to make up for the revenue from lost subscribers. It's more a matter of changing the way your brain works.
Revenue is no longer the driving force here. Information is. People are going to naturally flock to where they can get it, and the delivery mechanisms are merely tools of the trade. Kids in high school know how to use them effectively, and so do moms, grandparents, and soccer coaches. But the reality is we're all "new" to the scene... so the best way to learn is to just jump in and play.
If you're paying an expert to show you how it all works, you seriously don't get it and are going to get slaughtered anyhow.
Comments on "Why print is dead":
You are right. Content is always king. The sites I frequent all give me access to voices I want to, like to...hear. Voices with whom I would like to have a dialogue. Yours included, I might add. But I don't know if I would go so far as to say that that makes print dead. There are books I dowload to Kindle that I still wind up buying in print. Why is that? In my case, I guess it is something to do with the tactile quality of holding the book. I still subscribe to a few magazines...The Sun, Oxford American, The Bloodhorse. I still buy the occasional lit journal...The Prairie Schooner, Story... Print isn't dead for me, and I don't want it to be. Perhaps, because I just don't like the phosphorous screen all that much. I have a similiar conundrum with the shift in photography from film to digital, although I guess I have acquiesced, since, as I sit typing this, I don't think I have taken a roll of film to be developed in over two years...and as for the films I have made...geez, all but one has been digital. What this says to me, really, is that it is economics. Print, film...cost much more money to be harnessed in the effort of saying something, whereas blog space, digital video tape, digital drives, editing programs are all cheap and accessible.
I was talking with my mother a few years back, right after I had purchased my first 3-chip mini DV camera to shoot a short film and she asked me then if I worried that the competition would be getting fiercer now that the means of production were getting so much more accessible. I told her, no. I didn't worry, and I still don't, because humans have had access to pencil and paper for how long and how much greatness, or good entertainment, for that matter, has resulted? In any form, learning to use the tools is necessary, but it is always just the first step in making something worth seeing or reading.
It seems to me, as I trawl the web from time to time, that there is so little substantive content, even in the world of blogs, perhaps especially, in the world of blogs. This is why, when I find someone doing work that resonates with me that I make an effort to come back and see what those voices are saying, from time to time. I think the central problem with blogs, and I am sure my own is especially the case, is that they are too much about the blogger's self and not enough about why the voice would matter to more than just the blogger's circle of friends. If one isn't an interesting person, one whose thoughts might engage, surprise, enoble...if one isn't making some kind of...offering for others to think about, what is the point? In our time, we were told from an early age that we were special beings, that any of us could be President, that we mattered. My fear is that the era of Print-Is-Dead is telling our children, from an early age, that not only are they special beings, but that the Presidency is boring and not worth worrying about, and they are celebrities on par with the President, anyway--each of them a protagonist in a romantic comedy where they wind up rich, happy, and fulfilled and everyone cares what they think, so they must make sure to update that status five times a day. So far, in this young era of "social media" we've gone from the sloppiness of MySpace, to the almost-Aryan cleanliness of Facebook, to the fortune-cookie brevity of Twitter, and it is a mind-bending progression that begs the question, what next?
You bring up a good point about these "experts." I don't know what makes one a "social media" expert, and, to be honest, I didn't know that a name for those that specialize in these sorts of things existed. My father says, paraphrasing Franklin, I think, that if one studies any subject for one hour a day, every day, for a year, he is entitled to call himself an expert. Perhaps the time frame has accelerated since Franklin's day...things being so much speedier now...
One last thing...I am perplexed by your use of the word "stale" regarding content. I have magazine articles from the early 1990's still in my possession, newspaper articles and columns even older than that. When a story is related in print, and the story has something of substance in it, does it ever get stale? When Hemingway invented the 6-word story and ran: "For Sale--Baby Shoes, Never Worn,"...in the personals of a local paper...well, that just doesn't seem like it will ever get stale to me, all the heartbreak and plain need that it conveys. Content that makes you think does does so today, and twenty year later, too, right. There are books I keep either on a few cherished shelves or in the beat-up bookbag I used through college, (incidentally, most of which I have tried to download to that same Kindle!) that I return to, again and again, for ideas and inspiration. I don't think I agree that anything involving fusing carbon particles onto wood pulp is instantly dated....aside from the idea of something being "dated" merely by the moment it is made available for consumption.
JP, I appreciate a lot of what you've offered here, and thank you for including me on your regular reading list. It's an honor.
I like the economics argument. It is indeed easier today when we all have a virtual printing press literally at our fingertips. I believe the world's attention span (or perhaps lack thereof) deserves mentioning as well, though, and I feel this also points to the "stale" characterization. Much like beauty being in the eye of the beholder, staleness is driven by the the consumer, not the producer. Any cheese connoisseur would happily throw their weight behind that statement.
It's a fact that information travels much more quickly than it did, let's say, 20 years ago. And, there is a certain expectation that the most recent information is available "out there" somewhere. There's going to be a natural migration to that information, and there must be a corresponding change to the information production model. This applies more in terms of pure data than it does literature, which does have a more timeless quality. But, literature will benefit from the same model in terms of economics and getting it out to the masses. One can only hope that it doesn't suffer a drop in quality as a result.
Finally, an overall irony in your comment. You use 924 words in a digital forum to discuss the "print is dead" argument, which itself was only 552 words. I think this proves my point much more than it disputes it. :)# Posted by Brad Mills on February 6, 2010 @ 11:28 EST.
...or it could just point to the fact that I am a blowhard!
As much as I believe that content is king, I also believe that anything that is digital will eventually be free, something that media companies aren't excited about and are fighting tooth-and-nail. Have you read this article? ( http://www.wired.com )
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