Slashdot Mirror
Middle Media
Since the rise of electronic media like TV and the Net, the idea of New and Old media has become entrenched in the culture. Conventional wisdom says that the former will ultimately and completely replace the latter.
That doesn't seem to be happening, though interactive media are ascending rapidly, and the influence and monopoly of traditional media have diminished. But there are signs all over of a new, hybrid, and probably permanent Middle Media.
Old media are generally defined as newspapers, magazines, publishing and network TV, controlled by small groups of gatekeepers who make decisions about what's news and what's not. New media, by contrast, are interactive, with choices made by their consumers, and they're digitally or electronically transmitted. In general, they are much freer and more opinionated.
But technology and the way people use it is so inherently unpredictable that that rigid distinctions between the two are becoming less useful each day. Most "old" media now have "new" appendages, adjuncts and outlets, especially on the Web. And the people using new media still acquire information and use culture in traditional forms - they go to megaplexes, read magazines, follow books.
The idea of "new" or "old" media may not hold too much longer, just Middle Media that combine elements of both, giving information-seekers many more options.
One small but telling example was reported in American Demographic magazine's March issue, which reported that dot.com companies - Garden.com, Wine.com, Tavolo.com and jewelry retailer Miadora.com, among others -- are successfully experimenting with print catalogues. People buy online, but they want to see some paper and pictures first.
"There's something about flipping through a catalog that can't be replaced by the online experience," says Rich Fazekas, research director at W.A. Dean & Associates, a San Francisco catalog consulting firm that's just completed an informal study of e-commerce players launching catalogs. "If [e-tailers] want to grow as a sales channel, catalogs can be a vital part of their business."
Another indication of an emerging Middle Media is the fact that the journalistic move from paper to e-news has gone from a trickle to a flood. Reporters are leaving newsrooms all over the country to work for online information sites. These reporters, leaving papers like the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and smaller papers in chains like Gannett, are bringing traditional journalistic sensibilities to e-news, which until now has been much more free and raucous than the offline press.
Just a few years ago, most retailers thought catalogs would disappear as consumers browsed through graphically - advanced online displays.
The rise in catalogs in conjunction with dot.coms is interesting because it demonstrates again that people are often less absolute in their technological choices than the techno-pundits and seers predict.
The music industry is hysterical about online music distribution, but there is little or no evidence that their "property" is being hi-jacked en masse by digital thieves. Last week, the industry announced it earned a record $14+ billion in l999. Some newspapers - USA Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post - are belatedly realizing that the Net doesn't necessarily replace them, but can often offer new venues for breaking news, new vehicles for identifying and acquiring subscribers, and can generally promote interest in their existing formats. They may no longer hold monopolies on news and information, but they still have a significant slice of the pie.
In a Slashdot discussion last week about the future of newspapers, it was obvious that many people here, for example, valued print news in certain circumstances, particularly if papers would offer more focused and in-depth information on subjects like technology and culture, as well as local news.
Publishers approaching meltdown about the future of books can visit any Borders or Barnes & Noble, where salespeople constantly suggest that customers find books online, and where it's also clear that people aren't even close to giving up reading words on paper even if they also read words on computer screens. Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
Certain information formats can offer a sensual, contextual appeal that's impossible to quantify, and was not predicted. Consumers have fiercely resisted getting newspapers or books via digitized tablets. Convenience and speed are critical measures, but not the only ones. People enjoy browsing through catalogs they can see and hold, it seems, rather than simply buying everything online. They cling to the experience of congregating at malls and in bookstores, even when many of the items sold there are readily available on the Net and the Web. Movie admissions were up sharply last year, along with music revenues, and chain bookstores made huge profits.
The symbiotic boom in catalogs and online shopping may foreshadow the way future media will work. Media may not, in fact, be old-fashioned or new-fangled, but co-dependent. E-news and information can feed off print news and information, one stimulating interest in the other.
And the form of media might vary in terms of content as well. Information about politics, for example, might always be centered around print publications -- a handful of newspapers and magazines -- which are to many people better vehicles for presenting complex issues. Music distribution seems sure to move almost completely onto the Web, along with elements of radio and TV. But even though DVDs are booming, it seems unlikely people will forego the experience of going to theaters, which are also booming. Breaking news is clearly moving exclusively to e-media, as it is fast and tailor-made for hypertext.
Other kinds of coverage -- pop culture, health, investigative reporting, strong writing -- might always remain popular to consumers on paper.
Even though that pattern seems to be emerging, the truth is, nobody knows for sure. Interactivity has become one of the most powerful ideas in media history, no longer a fad but an expectation. As much as gatekeepers, politicians and journalists hate it, it isn't going away.
People expect to contribute to and participate in their information media, and to hold pundits, columnists and other information-givers accountable for what they report, think and write.
But as Garden.com's sweet-smelling catalogs show, the boundaries between old and new media are getting tougher to find. What is visible is a new and hybrid information structure, a new media species all its own.
Is there any? What kind of a genius does it take to figure out that people don't like to change things overnight? People like to smooth things over with gradual change. I know I do, and I know most businesses do too. This isn't a "middle media", it's just two medias in one.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Please die Jon Katz.
Middle media. What in da hell is Katz talking about this time? Hypermedia -- it's been around since the 80's, the 'Net has just meant it gets updated quicker & can have more peer to peer interaction/info sharing like on this message board. Newspaper's'll never die unless they're outlawed. Books will always be made. Interactivity will build and expand on the groundwork of hypermedia, not this middle media crap. TV's & movies'll be supplanted in different ways.
so newspapers are dead, but there's something about reading a catalog that can never be replaced?
do you pick your ideas out of a hat, or are you using a ouija board?
Publishers approaching meltdown about the future of books can visit any Borders or Barnes & Noble, where salespeople constantly suggest that customers find books online, and where it's also clear that people aren't even close to giving up reading words on paper even if they also read words on computer screens. Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
I doubt very much that books will become obsolete for quite a long time, even when the E-book finally becomes a reality for consumers. While some texts, particularly scientific textbooks, could do with the concept of hyperlinked sections, the majority of books would gain no real benefit to being digitised. Yes, it might be nice to search a book for a particular passge, but it's hardly essential for the enjoyment of the book.
While I love computers, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to read something that's more than 100 or so lines on a monitor. It just doesn't feel right and hurts your eyes, even on this brand-new 19" monitor. And I don't think curling up on your bed with your E-book will take off.
And I'm not even going to go in to the phenomenon of toilet books - you know, those books full of easily digestible sections which sit in the bathroom for when you need a quick read :)
how about indymedia? :-) :-)
adbusters
the onion
would slashdot be considered an alternative media source? probably?
anyone else got some good outside-the-mainstream media sources?
I don't know about you, but i still get all my news from everything 2
no
I don't see anything interesting about this article.
Well, a summary would be:
"Despite the recent huge push for everyone to get on to the internet, there seems to be a similar move from the internet to phisical media"
I was quite interested by the observation that some internet companies are experimenting with paper catalogues (Its only a matter of time before Amazon comes up with a "technology" that automates printing a catalogue[1])
The obvious conclusion is both media will merge.
[1]Just in case Amazon DOES try to patent this, here's some prior art
I've got an idea for a system thats connected to a database that can print paper catlogues on demand. You could have it so that it can create a downloadable printable document for home printing, or be printed elsewhere and delivered
What is with people writing articles using the "former vs latter" phraseology (had to look that one up). It stinks. It's old. It's annoying.
People seem to love it so much they purposely set up arrangements of arguments, just waiting for the splendid chance to use a "former vs latter"
I'm not saying Jon K. uses it all the time, this is the first time I've noticed it in one of his articles. I generally like his artciles, though I usually don't read all the way through...I just saw it this time and it bothered me. The fact that he reverses the order of "New and Old" from their counterparts in the first half of the sentence doesn't help.
Anyway, I feel better now.
cheese
This is an anti-Katz rant.
Can you talk about something we don't all already know about???
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
OK, so according to Jon Katz, we now have some kind of "middle media," where the old (print) media and the new (electronic) media have somehow merged together.
Four words: been there, done that.
This "middle media" you rant about has existed long before you started getting flamed on Slashdot Jon. Take a look at buying from TV. Home Shopping Network and QVC have been doing this "middle media" stuff for a while now. Rather than leaf through a bulky catalog for your favorite Hawaiian shirt, you can turn on the TV and see that shirt right there...they even have someone to walk around in it so you can see just how it looks! If you don't want to buy it from TV, you can always visit their store (QVC has one in Lancaster PA) and buy the same shirt you saw on TV. And yes, they do have catalogues to browse through. There you go, you have TV and the print media working together, an idea they've been doing since the mid 1980's.
And NOW you're popping up telling us that there's some new "middle media" that we should all be bowing down to? What rock have you been living under?
Ever wonder why a lot of people on Slashdot don't like you Jon? This article is just one reason. But feel free to enlighten me, as I'd be interested in what you have to say.
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
This is a quote from Newsweek on the arrival of the PS2: "It's historic, a mass-market appliance that fundamentally changes society in the way the printing press did," says Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts and CEO of 3DO. "This is a new canvas for humanity that takes us back to our nature." I think this is the kind of hype Katz is talking about. This kind of stuff is outrageous. The point is media (new or old) is just a tool to communicate ideas. Just because a tool is new doesn't mean it's better.
- My password is slashdot
doesn't mean Katz is dumb. So Hypermedia has been around for years. Does that mean Katz can't call it Middle Media and write a piece to generate discussion on this topic? So it's obvious that books and catalogs and CDs are still selling. I know this - I still use and buy all of them. That doesn't mean I can't have these facts pointed out to me every once in a while and actually be forced to think about why they're still selling.
Discussion and comments and arguments are what this site is about, in addition to news. So if it's not news (at least to some of us), why can't we just accept that and carry on with the discussion, comments and arguments?
Go ahead, moderate this down as inflammatory or something. I'm just speaking my mind. Think about it, and it might make sense.
Eruantalon
Eruantalon
The Annals of Middle-earth
Someone's obviously mastered ASCII painting, and has an agenda it seems to boot...
As far as Jon's article, though, he has a good point. The e-companies are discovering that the key to success is to take the best of the old models and marry them to the new. Remember Amazon, and their intent to be a "virtual company", with no inventories? They gave up on that and have been burning cash to build warehouses and shipping facilities, allowing them to control the process better. The e-tailers who are now branching into catalogs have discovered that to rely on on-line only is to leave money on the table.
The place for e-only commerce is in a small, specialty marketplace that is so focused as to make the Internet the only practical, affordable way to reach your target audience. Thinkgeek and Copyleft are two good examples of specialty businesses that probably couldn't succeed in a traditional catalog or retail world, because the overhead costs would be far too high to justify the limited audience. The classic examples like the hot sauce company that went online and had sales that took off (I forget the company, but this was some time ago) and the Copylefts of the world are the best ones for a purely e-commerce based approach.
In reality, Amazon needs warehouses and customer service reps, the New York Times needs (and can make money from) online newsfeeds, and MicroWarehouse needs to have online ordering from their catalog (the closest postal equivalent to spam I've seen) in order to maximize their revenues. Smart companies like Ingram Micro make it easier for companies to do business in this hybrid world with fulfilment services and private-label direct shipping. Shippers like FedEx and UPS are more valuable too in this new economic model because in many cases they will be the only actual contact the customer has.
In the end, the Internet is changing the way business is done, but the smart companies use the best of the old and combine it with the new to make more money. Money is a Good Thing, especially when you're making it...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Alright. Normally I like to read Katz's articles. As a rule even if I don't agree they make me think a little. But this one falls under the category of Huh?. Did I miss something?
Of course people like to hold paper in there hands and look at it. This is how most of us grew up getting information. Maybe the children being born today will be more used to a monitor and want there information that way. However, the vast majority of people that buy online right now want to be able to browse through there buying decision without being tied to the computer.
Just because the dot.coms and others are using paper catalogs now doesn't mean that everything won't finally go all electronic. Even paper will have interactive abilities eventually. This is all just a transition period not some Middle Media thing.
threadeds blog
We have seen news-men with a hidden and not-so-hidden agenda (Spanish American War, Bill Clinton's election, "It's just about sex" etc) and they know their days are numbered.
The fact that on online "e-tailor" prints a catalog demonstrates nothing about "Middle Media" -- but more about Jon Katz' desire to be relevant when he clearly isn't.
I don't necessarily think that the increase in theater receipts and music sales can be directly attributed to advances in 'new' media and the internet. I think that a number of people are trying to create a causal relationship where one doesn't necessarily exist. I think that people are overlooking a booming economy and attempting to say, "Hey, despite traffic of mp3s on the internet, the record companies are still getting richer"
I agree that there is a revolution going on, and people are becoming more and more attracted to digial media (whether it be mp3s, online newspapers, eBooks, etc.) but I don't think the time is yet upon us where these are going to supplant 'old' media.
-----
"Defenestration" is to throw out of a window; what's a word for throwing 'Windows' out of something?
First, people will praise all the brand new features, how it will change the entire world, and how the "old best thing" in that field will become very much obsolete.
However, when you check back in a few months, you'll find that the product, service or company that survived wasn't the "next best thing" or the "old best thing", but the "combination of what made the old best thing the best, along with the features of the new best thing".
This is true of media, operating systems, cars, toothbrushes, food and damn near everything else out there...
Before anyone posts to admonish me, I'm using 'media' in the broadest most general sense, and not as a plural of 'medium'.- ----
--------------------------------------
Gatekeepers are not always bad. They perform a valuable service in filtering out crap, fact checking, enforcing a uniform style and maintaining standards for grammar and spelling (hint, hint). If you've ever browsed through a "slush pile", you will be glad that someone else has to pick the gems out of the manure.
It seems to me to make much more sense to keep dividing and criticizing media along more traditional lines:
The forced format of the medium. Books have usually been text, magazines now have lots of pictures, newspapers are moving to more graphical formats, television is tied to pictures, and the Web might soon bring everything at once. "Old" and "New" makes no sense here; everyone wants to convey information in a way that makes the most sense for the information itself and for those who consume it.
The number of people who can be involved. Books are generally very prohibitive; they are usually written by just one person. Newspapers, magazines and TV programs are often the result of collaboration - but they do not allow serious, prolonged interaction. The Web permits dialogue, often with amazing results (like Slashdot, or the new online academic journals). But there are always exceptions: many Web sites are top-down (without dialogue) and many newspapers have ample letters sections (encouraging public dialogue).
It just seems to me that calling some media old and some new is a particularly useless way of trying to dichotomize what is, in fact, a richly intricate and complex process.
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
perhaps the reason sales in everything, especially in entertainment related fields, is up is because the economy is so strong. people just have more money to spend.
Given "Shetland ponies" and "acupunture", I got "Demystifying the Man-Animal Holistic Connection."
Given "hot grits" and "Natalie Portman", I got "Cyberfood and E-Love in the Naboo System.",
Given "school shootings" and "confused by Linux", I got "Greetings from the Hellmouth 5: When The Lack of Man Pages Causes the Info-Ignorant to go on a Geek Goth Gun Nerd Columbine Rampage."
Clearly, this is a program whose time has come. Hey, Rob, open the Katzbot source!
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
It never held in the first place. This whole "new media vs. old media" thing was just a way for a bunch of young journalists to maintain their sense of self-importance while ignoring "old fashioned" notions such as fact-checking and objectivity. It was a typical rush to the new by people didn't really even understand the old. Now we see the shakeout, where everyone realizes that things weren't all that different after all.
Have you open-sourced the code that generates these trolls?
Newspapers will NEVER be completely replaced by the TV (ever swatted a fly with a TV?), or by computers. It's been tried. Teletext services, such as Ceefax, were a complete, unmitigated disaster. Not because of the information, or the immediacy, but because they don't have the flexibility.
THIS, I think, is the key. Anybody with a couple of dollars to their name can buy the materials needed to write a masterpiece on paper, sketch stunning works of art, or scribble to their heart's content. ANYWHERE. On the highest mountains, on the oceans, in the dryest deserts, ANYWHERE. For as long as they like. Yes, there's only so much ink, but it doesn't run out just by leaving the book open. Pens last for weeks or months, not hours. And books are FAR, FAR lighter, for small quantities of information.
This leads me onto the second key point. Paper IS vastly superior to digital representations, for small volumes of information. Computers are GREAT for number-crunching, sorting, processing, et al, but give me a notepad and a pen for a shopping list or swapping a phone number.
Third, Jon Katz is no scout, and probably never has been. Nor does he know many Travellers. What do these have in common? Secret writings, using sticks, stones, and gouged lines, designed not to be visible to those who don't know. What'll they do, if physical writing no longer exists? Leave a laptop at the crossroads, in the hope only the right person'll see it? Be real!
Last, but not least, statistics has no real concept of "zero". Gaussian distributions, sure! But a Gaussian distribution has no mathematically defined limit for either tail. What does this mean? Simple. Computers will never replace the written, printed or carved word. They are too useful. What we'll see is the Gaussian distribution centre itself midway between the "old" forms and the "new" forms, but that's ALL it will be. The mid-section of the distribution. The rest will exist in each camp, according to the needs of the users.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
IIRC, the onion has always been available in print, and then went on the web.
/.'ers want to vouch for this?
Any midwest
George
of Bruce Sterling's right here.
Saw a funny referance recently, Dave Barry? Steve Martin? Anyway, about how email, where messages are sent across great distances at the speed of light, has largely replaced smoke signals, where messages are send across great distances at the speed of light.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Personally, I think that this is a rather creative example. Notice the simulated oversampling around the edges to reduce graininess. Notice also for a moment the soft positioning of characters as to give the illusion of roundness. However, as an esteemed ASCII art critic, I would have used just a tiny bit of overlap between the letters to give it that more stylish, inner-city look that is so common amongst graffitti. Perhaps using more dense characters and have them fade to the colons as they transverse the horizontal on each letter. I believe the proprieter of this piece of art should be held in high regard for his or her effort to demonstrate the beauty of such an old computer medium. I say bidding for this work begins at US$1,000.
SiliconDragon
These articles sound like auditions for those outlets that we're getting the second-run of and not original, provocative content written for Slashdot.
Current copyright law says that if a book goes out of print, the author can reclaim the copyright, and take it to another publisher. With these newer forms of publishing, all a corporate publisher has to do is sell one copy occasionally -- printed on demand -- for the book to be legally be considered not "out of print" indefinitely.
An example of this: right now there are seven books (psychology related texts -- which I won't name for the same reasons) that I would order in a second if they were in print. But would I rather keep them in print at a publisher who let them sit there for years, or wait another year or two for the author to regain control?
I'll wait. And when the author regains that control, I hope they use electronic publishing and print on demand to keep control of their works until the copyright expires.
(Somewhat related side note: I think that the Sonny Bono extensions to the period of time a copyright is issued for are wrong, BTW. And that corporations shouldn't be able to pass around (sell) their collection of copyrights like stocks unless the original contributors are somehow compensated, but that is even further off-topic).
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
OK, just to grab a few bits from the beginning (i.e. the 'topic paragraphs') of JonKatz's article:
"For years, Old Media dismissed electronic competitors as frivolous and temporal. Then New Media appeared to be burying its predecessors for good. It appears both notions may have been wrong. The boundaries between new and old media are getting fuzzy, as a hybrid Middle Media emerges between the two."
and...
"Conventional wisdom says that the former will ultimately and completely replace the latter."
Who comes up with this shit? For decades now, people have been saying that print media will never dissappear. Since day one of 'the new media,' nobody except for a very few extremists has been saying that the 'old media' will dissappear. The idea is, has always been, and will continue to be that as it develops, new media technologies will coexist and integrate with the old ones. Given that, this article is pretty stupid and alarmist, not to mention long.
Oh wait--I forgot the source. Nevermind.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Unless I missed them of course.
I think a great deal of the lack of a total switch from paper to digital is sheer portability. The laptop computer is all well and good. I love them. However, they are still somewhat bulkier than a newspaper or magazine. They still attract attemtion as a 'unusual' item, are expensive, prone to theft, and require batteries, power supply's and carrying satchels. A newspaper is not only portable - but disposable. A novel - fits in my jacket pocket. A radio - change the batteries twice a month at the most. And, I believe, even as laptops and desktops merge, and become easier to use and carry, we will still retain our love of paper, just as we still go to the theatre, listen to the radio, and go outside and play baseball sometimes. There are other factors involved in entertainment and information than what hits our eyes, tickles our ears, and feeds our brains. (You know, I like that line. I think I shall quote it in a sig file today) -- We go to the movies for the group big-screen expierence. For the popcorn and the soda and the sticky floors. We read books for the feel of the paper under our fingers, for the sound of rustling pages, and for the smell of a new book (If you don't know what I mean, go to the bookstore, purchase a book, ANY book, open it stick your nose in, and take a deep breath. Its GREAT) Its not 'middle media' or 'old media' or 'new media'. Its what we DO as humans. We add to our choices of entertainment. Rock music didn't eliminate classical music. Movies didn't eliminate plays. TV didn't eliminate theatre. The internet won't eliminate books, newspaper or television either.
http://quiz.ravenblack.net/blood.pl?3357354385
There is an interesting theory I heard that went like this. Online business is a lot like the introduction of catalogs. Again you can run a business with a minimum of overhead, without stores everywhere, etc. But the most successful catalog businesses combine the two. People like to order from a catalog. But they also like to be able to see the real thing, and they want to return items to a real store. Whether it started as a retail business (Eaton's) or as a catalog business (Victoria's Secret) the most successful catalog retailers combine catalogs with traditional retail outlets.
I believe there is some reason to believe that the same thing is happening with online retailing. Barnes and Noble is more and more often beating Amazon. They are also beating Borders. Unless Amazon buys Borders, I think that we will eventually see Barnes and Noble dominate both the online and the retail markets - winning in each market because of the synergy with the other...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
But as Garden.com's sweet-smelling catalogs show, the boundaries between old and new media are getting tougher to find. What is visible is a new and hybrid information structure, a new media species all its own.
Katz, to finish with this tripe is sad. "New media and old media have formed this new species, blah, blah, blah," Jon spent too much time at Wired and thought he new what new media was. Now he starts to see signs of things changing and backtracks because they don't change fast enough. Wait 20 years Jon, media can't change in 5.
All it can do in that time is slowly morph to some middle ground, and you think'll stop here. Less that 5% of the homes in this country have broadband. Excuse me for being a Net 1337i57, but if you don't have broadband, YOU ARE NOT ON THE NET and can't *really* participate in new media (it's too slow to be useful), just some bastard child that hints at the real possibilities. Until 50%+ is hooked up, you won't see sweeping changes. That will take 20+ years.
Go climb a mountain or something Jon and think a bit longer about the difference between stopping halfway and calling it the top, and climbing upward until there's no mountain left.
(posted here to avoid the me-too root posting tendancy.)
--
+&x
That may be so, but it's much easier to go the other way (go from a thriving catalog business into dotcom land). Why? Many existing catalog companies already have a solid logistics network in place. Look at Lands End or direct companies like Dell who have been in the logistics business a lot longer than they have been in the online business. Setting up your database and slapping up a storefront is one of the easier parts of this process. The real work is done in warehousing, inventory management, shipping, and order fulfillment. In the point-click-get it tomorrow world, those who master logistics will become industry leaders. Oh, I know that's not as sexy as saying it's some new media paradigm, but it's powering the companies that are getting it done.
I hope a lot of these dotcoms aren't getting into the catalog business just because they know people like to read things on dead trees. That's kind of the equivalent of a company putting up a brochureware website because they know everyone's getting online. Running a catalog mail-order business can be very similar top running a good online business but only if you set it up right with a solid structure of order fulfillment behind it. Many catalog companies get that; they've had decades to streamline their distribution, and they can make the move online rather easily. New media? Middle media? Hardly. More like just one more new channel for a proven existing way.
tough to see smoke from a fire in Norway here is the U.S though, eh? :)
--
+&x
(posting AC because I'm moderating today...)
The radical new development of mass-market "books", made possible by this new-fangled thing invented by Guttenburg, was anticipated to bring about the long-awaited death of theatre as the public's primary source of entertainment. Much to everyone's amazement, it appears that theatre, and other live performances, are in fact not dying at all. The pundits are stunned.
"Perhaps one day," says one, "there will be this thing called convergence, maybe not with books, but some sort of projected images telling a story for a mass audience, with traditional theatre being performed at the same time mirroring the story, and raucous audience participation both enhancing and commenting on the same story. It could be called "Rocky Horror"."
You know what smell I am talking about... There is that musty smell you get when you open that old book your mother gave you before she died, the new glue smell you get when you open a book for the first time or the flowery perfume smell you get when looking at the Victoria's Secret catalogue (I know ALL of you know this one.. :)) That smell is the first thing I think of when I think about reading and it is the reason that books will never become entirely electronic.
Jon Katz is just the kind of shortsighted pundit that would have been proclaiming a couple of years ago that the internet would be the place where everything is done in the future. That's like saying that the Dremel will be the only tool someone uses forever. It doesn't make any sense. While being useful for many things I do throughout the day, the net is not a panacea. It's a large part of my life, but doesn't permeate it. So poor people and people living in the third world don't have to worry. They can live happy, healthy, productive lives and never be connected to the internet. Thanks, Jon Katz. I couldn't have figured that out without your help.
I don't think that the electronic media will ever replace the printed word... at least in the US. There is a strong lobby in D.C. to stop this from happening. Next to Tobacco, Firearms, Insurance, and Pharmaceuticals; the Paper Fastener Lobby (the manufacturers of paper clips and staples) is one of the most powerful and influential organizations.
pronoblem
And NOW you're popping up telling us that there's some new "middle media" that we should all be bowing down to? What rock have you been living under?
Jon's article isn't saying we should be "bowing down to" this middle media. On the contrary, his text cleary indicates he's not certain where it's going, but is asking questions about the implications and the direction things *could* move in. If you read carefully, you'll see he uses terms like, "And the form of media might vary in terms of content as well" or "might always remain popular to consumers on paper"
At no point did I see a statement that said anything about the certainty of middle media succeeding, or that we should be completely submissive and accepting of it (bowing down to it, as you claim). On the contrary, he points out that the electronic media dictates a greater openess and consumer participation in the content and success of the material in question.
Ich suche die Leidenschaft, die keine Leiden schafft.
Certainly, this discussion will generate some heat, but I wouldn't call it flamebait. I don't believe that CLIs and GUIs are mutually exclusive. It is certainly possible to have systems without one or the other, but it isn't necessary. The tension between the proponents of each side come from a firm insistence that their own preferrence not be abandoned. So let's examine the merits of each and consider the implications for the print vs. electronic media issue. I think that the way I am going to twist this analogy will be counterintuitive at first, but it may shed some light.
CLIs are not inherently more flexible than GUIs. There is no reason that they necessarily must have a richer set of options than a GUI can provide. However, that is often the case. Don't flame me if your favorite GUI is easily as flexible as my favorite CLI. I not only concede that it is possible, but that it has been done. The biggest hurdle in presenting a flexible GUI is to not sacrifice the benefits that GUIs provide. The biggest one is that GUIs allow users to leverage the power of recognition over the burden of remembering.
Okay, with that out of the way, what are the benefits of a CLI interface? I'm going to talk about the Unix shell functionality as one of th best examples of a truly rich set. Primarily, a CLI puts a rich set of functionality into a form simple, flexible commands and a mechanism for combining them. The power of the Unix/Linux shell model is the ability to combine commands in useful ways, and also to script those combinations. Once scripted, they essentially become powerful new commands. I haven't seen a GUI that privdes this mechanism to script repeated operations and build up complex combinations with conditional logic. Is there one?
Now, how does this related to print versus electronic media. I would say that the scripting capability is related to the direct accessibility of electronic texts to be manipulated in various forms. E-text can be cut and pasted for quoting. I personally find it easier to translate because I can search through it for similar phrases that I have translated elsewhere. It can be transmitted faster and more flexibly than a printed book.
Printed formats are analogous to a GUI. They are designed around a set of intuitive operations. It is obvious how to determine your position in the text, how to move forward and backward, etc. They are easy to look at and read. They hide the details of how graphics were included.
Yes, I turned the analogy on its head and equated the new, electronic text, with the old, command line interfaces, and vice versa (print and GUIs). Does this possibly hint at who I think falls most naturally on each side of the two debates? I think that those of us who are used to taking control of our computers through a CLI, who are so used to data being a live thing and building filters to put it in whatever form we want, are also likely to want our text that way. I could be wrong, but if I have erred, I suspect it is in not including some people who use GUIs as flexibly. I think the reasons for choosing electronic over printed text are still present in the analogy.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
I don't understand why Jon Katz is always given a forum to speak, as if his words hold some weight or importance. It seems he is often more interested in exploring the limitations (real or imagined) of technology and all things net, rather than the possibilities. Is this the best our digital tribe can come up with? Are there no real writers out there to make us dream, rather than downplay the revolutionary force of technology?
how email, where messages are sent across great distances at the speed of light, has largely replaced smoke signals, where messages are send across great distances at the speed of light.
Or semaphores, though the network layer latencies of Semanet and Smoke Ring are pretty atrocious.. Bridging is really difficult and the routing algorithms are poorly implemented and not very well maintained..
Your Working Boy,
Yes, this is a thorny issue, and I hadn't thought about that implication. To a certain extent the authors who are really in demand are likely to be able to exert some control. New authors still face the issue that they are dealing with large corporations who don't need them, individually, as much as the authors need publishers. Electronic publishing may actually change this. It lowers the cost of publishing a work. The monetary compensation to the author may turn out lower is some cases, but if it can get a new author's work into the hands of readers when he would not otherwise have had that chance, it is probably worth it. There are already a number of cases of people whose work, self-published on the web, has shown up in print.
This will certainly increase the time it takes for classic works to become available online. And there will be a period for most of them, when they aren't in print in any meaningful sense, but are not in the public domain. Regrettably, that has the effect of reducing the exposure of many worthwhile older works without increasing the revenue to anyone. If they aren't getting sold, nobody makes money.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
The biggest reason why this world will not be transformed into a brave new digital world overnight is that the existing business structure has a sort of stranglehold on the net. The point is money.
How do you connect to the net? Via an ISP perhaps. So you have to pay them a lot. They can revoke your access at will. Some tightass lunatic can complain about content s/he doesn't understand. So your access gets revoked. Not good.
The point is that as long as people have to pay for access and almost every other thing we'll be looking at boring old stuff from those who are in control ie. have enough money to put content to the web.
As long as we have someone profiting over the work of someone else, we will not lose the idiocy of money and so the same old s..t will keep on going and going and going. Without money all content could be free as in beer!
Here's a survey that'll help us learn a bit more about the moderators here at Slashdot. Dear Moderators: thank you for participating in this survey! Your feedback will be very helpful!
INSTRUCTIONS:
-If you enjoy having sexual relations with children, moderate this down as "troll"
-If you enjoy having sexual relations with cats, moderate this down as "offtopic"
-If you enjoy having sexual relations with cows, moderate this down as "flamebait"
-If you have had sex with Richard Stallman, moderate this down as "redundant"
-If you have had a threesome with Richard Stallman and ESR, moderate this down as "overrated"
-If you have ever had sexual relations with a normal human being of the opposite gender, moderate this up as "funny"
Thank you.
Sometimes I wonder where the obsesive thought that everything new must replace and destroy what caame before it comes from. Mostly I don't bother.
Every medium has value. And the metavalues of that medium are different for everyone. Did the printing press cause hand copied books and hyroglyphics to become worthless? No, they greatly increased in value because people realized the value creation through the sheer effort that was necessary to create a hand written book.
Oil paints have not invalidated cave art or watercolors or vice versa.
What is gained through the net is a medium where it is incredibly simple to post information that is accessible to millions and billions of people. Inexpensive, cheap and easy.
There exists an added credibility in print media, justified or not. People recognize the tremendous cost for the creation of print media, paid reporters, informants, ink, and paper.
Most people here recognize the high cost of a highly visible and popular web site like slashdot, paid reporters and all. Most people do not see these costs.
Simply put there are differing uses for differing mediums, they all have differing intrinsic values, but the difference of these values means that no one medium is inherently better for every situation.
Please don't cheapen our new or our old sources of information by declaring that one must destroy or dominate the other. Celibrate the fact that people today have such an amazing amount of access to such a diverse quantity of information, for this is one of the true cornerstones of democracy.
chris pugrud
chris@pugrud.net
--- Not anonymous, not a coward.
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
i wonder why this continues to escape the grasp of the so-called 'experts'. we like our catalogues and our books because they give us something tangable; something that connects us to the outside world. i'm sure many of you have been on the internet as long as i have (~8 years (some longer i'm sure)). those who have been on that long have come to the realisation that the internet as a whole is a waste of time. it used to be about browsing for inordinate amounts of time, now it's to go on get what we need and get off. the 'trend experts' continue to only see the newbies for whom the novelty of fingertip, ask if you want it information has not worn off.
jonkatz says that we continue to go to the movies. but, he says this as if it were a divine revelation. of course we go to the movies, we are a sociable spieces. it's always more fun to see a movie with others than by ones self. this is the reason i choose to stay in the theatre industry. i go to the theatre to be moved, to be entertained. there is something to be said for having the actors only a few meters away (as well as sitting with an audience). it is an experience you can't get at your computer and i enjoy bringing that experience to others as a theatrical sound designer. it is continued to be said that print media will go the way of the dinosaur, but that's also what they said about theatre over the last hundered years. things that involve the human experience don't disappear, they evolve.
people understand the convience of the internet but have a deep desire to remain with people. check out the personals if you don't believe me. it just seems obvious to me that we would wish to have something to tie us to a society that otherwise is intangable through ones and zeros. dvds maybe cool but the imax experience is better. mp3s sound nice but nothing beats attending a live concert. it's about time people opened their eyes and discovered that technology isn't here to replace the human experience, just to enhance it.
rev. eric
So you're agreeing with Katz, then. You make the statement that you "don't necessarily think that the increase in theater receipts and music sales can be directly attributed to advances in 'new' media and the internet". That's Katz's point. He states:
Although online book sales are growing on sites like Fatbrain, Amazon and BN.com, so are the sales of books in stores. The technological absolutism invoked by the rise of the Net - everything will go digital - is not coming to pass.
In other words, others are claiming that the Internet is impacting sales in older distribution channels, but he's pointing out that that's not correct.
Ich suche die Leidenschaft, die keine Leiden schafft.
I'm really surprised that noonne has yet made this observation (perhaps someone did, if so I apologise, I did skim through the responses fairly quickly)
The REAL new "middle media" is right here. Really.
Slashdot is the PERFECT example of "middle media".
Everyone seems to agree that "old media" , (and I think we're getting to hung up on defining "old media" by the FORM of physical media used to communicate the message, rather than the ORGANIZATIONAL structure used to generate the information dissemenated by that media) is not going away anytime soon. Fair enough. I would agree with that.
Problem as I see it is, with all of the vast amounts of "old media" out there and all the thousands of "new media" outlets emerging, it's simply WAY too much information for the average person who consumes information as a small subset of their normal lives to take in.
So, as I see it, in my humble opinion, the idea of a "middle media" is very much valid, and I'm convinced will emerge as a titan on not only the 'net but all forms of communication. But I define the "middle media" as a collection of somewhat specialized collators of all media, like Slashdot is for technology/Linux/techonology-politics.
A weblog of sorts, with the added benefit of INSTANT feedback in the form of truly open comments, taking what is otherwise a LONG, painful process of debating and agonizing amoung the media outlets over every story and making it a VERY fast, (in Slashdot's case a few hours) intense discussion, and then we all move on to the next story.
I'm convinced also that this model will begin to appear in print and television as well. I can TOTALLY see a "Slashdot TV" program with Taco and Hemos (or two scantily clad babes playing the roles of Taco and Hemos) burning through the best-of-the Slashdot news for the day/week, taking phone calls and adding their own pithy wit to the mix. Hell, if I lived in Michigan, I'd have already put my 10 years experience in TV to work and got them to do it by now, but I'm sure someone will soon, and it will work.
Just my 2 cents, of course.
When was the last time you used an online catalog and it even came close to compating what was available in print I can only think of about 3.
...because you didn't catch this:
;-)
He writes for large, non-technical *users* of technology
Large users? Hey, is he saying non-techs are fat?
If you are gonna troll, do it properly!
In Star Trek: Voyager, the crew of Voyager uses technology extensively. Ask the replicator for the food you want, without having to print off a copy of the recipe to keep next to the cooker. Want to know something? Pull it up on a display or ask the computer directly. Old media, such as TV shows, and music are played in crew's quarters by the computer from databases on the ship.
But interestingly enough, in several episodes, crewmembers (such as Janeway in "Fairhaven"), have books replicated to read, instead of reading the texts on the computer screen.
So yes, although media delivery may change in many profound or not-so-profound ways, I would argue that books will be around for quite some time to come. But will technology change the way we receive at least some content? Absolutely.
Ich suche die Leidenschaft, die keine Leiden schafft.
All hypotheses welcome.
------------------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship
as damage, and routes around it."
Face it: the world is a messy, changing place. Attempts to codify the "new," "old," and "middle" media are just as silly as attempts to divide the internet into contintents.
Phones did not kill personal conversation. Radio did not kill live performance. The movies did not kill radio. Television did not kill the movies. Cable and satellite did not kill broadcast TV. Do we see a trend here? Newspapers have been around since Gutenburg. They will not be dying anytime soon.
Television shifted news away from the theater, which had shifted it away from radio. Papers still sold. The speed of communication and decision making increased, along with productivity, living standards, etc. The internet has increased the cultural baud rate. It is the speed of information transfer that will have lasting social effects, not the panic of a few media moguls.
If the katzbot wants to spout off, he should consider the role of increasing decision rates and cultural transfer. Society can be remade in a few months, with new music, attitudes, clothing, and so on. The media are a part of this, ever changing and rearranging. Katz wants solid, static, Aristotelian categories so he can compare and contrast them.
Sorry, bub. There ain't any. What we got here is good ole fashioned evolution. By the time you've written up your next article, it will be outdated. Change, Jon. Change is the "form" of the internet revolution. We need differential equations, not geography.
Network Working Group Jason Pees-On-Trees Wagner Request for Comments: 32768 Univ of Arizona Category: Informational/Experimental 1 April 2001 A Standard For The Transmission Of IP Datagrams By Means Of Chemical Reactions In Oxygenated Hydrocarbons Status of this Memo This memo describes an experimental method for the encapsulation of IP datagrams in bursts of residue from the chemical combustion of oxygenated hydrocarbons. This specification is primarily useful in Western Area Networks. This is an experimental, not recommended standard. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Overview and Rational Oxygenated hydrocarbons provide a means of low-bandwidth, insecure, and short-distance service. The connection topology does provide easy access to multicast capabilities. Unlike most methods of trans- mission, this form allows multiple hosts to transmit and recieve simultaneously. This is because of the 3-dimensional nature of the transmission medium, in direct contrast to the 1-dimensional medium implemented in IEEE802.3. Communication is, however, limited to line- of-sight distance, although repeaters may be implemented to offset this limitation. Quality of service is not guaranteed, due to factors such as current wind speed, low-flying aircraft, and precipitation. Service is generally based upon a hub topology, although on a macro- connection scale, a bus topology may be implemented. Frame Format The IP datagram is generally printed on paper, in order to act as an output buffer for the network interface. It should be printed in binary format. The distance between the network interface and the output buffer should be maximized, to reduce the probability of the buffer being dropped into the firewall. The datagram should be read in from the input buffer and outputted by means of a large cloth fanned over an open flame. The bandwidth is variable, depending upon ambient atmospheric conditions, the previous usage of the interface, and the size of the interface. The MTU can increase or decrease, depending mostly upon the network interface. Upon receipt, the datagram should be written into an input buffer which can be then optically scanned into an electronically transmittable form. Discussion The major disadvantage to this transmission standard is its one-way nature. This problem may be circumvented by utilizing a transmitter and reciever at each end. Multiple network interfaces can be multiplexed in order to gain bandwidth and reduce round-trip latency. Wagner [Page 1] RFC 32768 IP Datagrams in Oxygenated Hydrocarbons 1 April 2001 All repeaters in this medium automatically gain bi-directional transmission capability. While broadcasting is not specified, storms can cause data loss, even to the point of making a connection impossible. This RFC specifies a connection-less protocol only, and requires a connectionned protocol such as TCP to operate effectively. Logging maybe used to increase the throughput of the network interface. Security Considerations Security is a serious problem in this medium. Intercepts of the raw datagrams is easily achieved and virtually undetecable. Encryption is highly recommended, especially when transmitting crucial data. Due to the nature of the medium, firewalls are a necessity, but less crucial during packet storms. To avoid leaving an audit trail, the dispersion of said firewall, both the input and output buffers, and all logs is a requirement. Author's Address Jason Pees-On-Trees Wagner University of Arizona Tiny Admin Closet Division 23 Boondocks Way Sierra Vista, AZ 85635
The above comment is CopyWrong (K) Erisian Entertainment. All Rights Reversed. Ewige Blumenkraft!
I've been running this experiment. So far, I have the equivalent of 10^14 monkey hours.
Results:
0 Shakspearean plays
1 Jon Katz columns
10^15 Pauly Shore movies
I'm traveling and just browsed the posts below. Strange..I know this isn't a flame, but this isn't deep or complex. The point is pretty clear and being much discussed around media offices, ad agencies and in mags like American demographics..All old media isn't vanishing as rapidly as people thought just a few years ago, and old and new media are linking up synergistically, and creating different kinds of media outlets. It's not a complicated point, it is new, and I'm by no means the lst person to notice it or write about. It's also interesting many of the comments below are attacking me for making this point, and than making it along with me. Strange. There is a mindlessness to these flames that many people comment on and ask me about. Flames don't bug me much (I'm not running for mayor), but I'm not sure I know how to answer.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I think I spent just the right time at Wired, frankly, and what has broadband got to do with this? Millions of people (tens of millions) shop on the Net and get news without broadband. As to the mountain, can't wait.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Incomplete, but not bad..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I can't believe people are surprised the *second* time these predictions fail to come true.
[I can't believe people are surprised, ever, when predictions don't come true. Like some Wired journalist can predict how a decision made by millions of people will go!] The amusement value in this article is that after a crippling attack on printed media last week, followed by /. opinions that printed media are, in fact, valuable, totally backpedals and say, "hey, printed media are here to stay". Well ,duh.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
You boob, I've been saying this for months. I guess because I'm an AC and you're a slashnerd, I'll never get the credit. Oh, well. As long as we spread the word about this vile program, we can prevent it from corrupting our souls.
I've run into a number of these bots in Usenet. The problem is widespread, and needs fixing.
They remind me of ELISA.
I don't have anything against you personally; I don't know you at all. Sometimes your pieces are good, and sometimes they aren't. I rather think this one was shot wide, but maybe I am missing the point.
Someone else made a comment to the effect that this piece would be more appropriate on a less tech-related site, like salon or yahoo. I'm not sure how close that is to the truth, but there may be something there. Many of your pieces do tend to target the lowest common denominator when it comes to technology. While I recognize some of the points you made on this subject in your intereview, I think you may -- in very simple terms -- be boring some of the readers.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
This article is simply obvious. I know Katz likes to try to stir up controversy with his articles, but this one does nothing. What is more surprising is that Katz has relegated himself to using old essays/books. If you have ever read his second book, "Virtuous Reality," you would realize the similarities between this essay, and his prior one on Old v. New media. I don't particularly dislike Katz, but his last few articles aren't novel or even thought provocing.
"I am a student. Please do not fold, spindle, or mutilate me." -Slogan of the Free Speech Movement, 1964.
I hate to be a bit off topic, but it seems that to say what is next, I must be. So be it.
Would all the people who "hate Jon Katz" please refrain from posting messages stating this unless you have something constructive to add. (i.e. "I hate Jon Katz because he didn't write this story, but instead stole this one from me, altering the facts and messing up all that was good in it.")
If nothing else, Katz's articles provide much food for though, material to provoke discussion. So it is best if the articles are used for intelligent discussion, rather than flamewars. If you don't like the articles, don't read them. Or if you have a problem with the ideas stated in the article, show why they are wrong. But say something constructive.
Though printed text is more comfortable to read than onscreen text, doesn't it cost a lot of trees? What percentage of the trees that the human race consumes go to printed materials? What percentage of landfill space goes to their disposal? I imagine that the E-book and competitors could be made convenient and comfortable enough so that people could enjoy them. So isn't the development of E-books sort of an environmental duty?
the concept of a middle media is strange, to say the least. given that to mediate is to provide the middle communication channel between things, media is supposedly, by definition, a middle ground anyhow. does this mean that media is getting closer to providing the kind of transparent mediation it was supposedly conceived for?
Yet another oversimplified observation by JK. It seems this article followed blindly from the catchy buzzword "middle media" (congratulations), but as we all know new media is the same old shit in a shiny new wrapper.
Old media are generally defined as newspapers, magazines, publishing and network TV, controlled by small groups of gatekeepers who make decisions about what's news and what's not. New media, by contrast, are interactive, with choices made by their consumers, and they're digitally or electronically transmitted. In general, they are much freer and more opinionated.
How can you say that "new media" are freer and more opinionated simply because they take advantage of a hot new distribution medium? All media companies are interested in one thing only: selling an audience to advertisers. If the content on a site upsets the advertisers, the content changes or the advertisers walk. The online sites will face the same capitalist pressures as "old media" and these pressures are what ultimately determine the content on the site. People's greater access to the net will have a minor, marginal effect on this traditional ad-subsidized model. Any "free-thinkers" who want to make money will be quickly reigned in by their investors and advertisers.
Unless the culture and political climate changed drastically (highly improbable) nothing will really change. The Net will be the next television, and we all see what's become of that: pay $60 a month for 100 channels of info-tainment (emphasis on the 'tainment).
Yea, this sounds about right. I mean just the otherday Advertising Age http://adage.com/news_and_features/index.html reported that Nike was going to release a catalog to try to obtain slighty more market share. While this type of tactic by Nike shows that an intergrated marketing program is better then a non-integrated one ; I believe it shows that most people are still interested in looking at non-internet and non-computer related medium, or atleast would like the advantage of getting away from a terminal for a couple hours a day. -- flame on johnny flame