(Based on the presentation made to SXSW 2010)
Content is the king, right?
Maybe not.
It seems the king was deposed but most people didn’t notice it yet.
Evanescent experiences and participative crowds are claiming back the power they once had in the old villages radically transforming
all the media and communication industries
just as they replace the elderly, pre-packed, pre-thought, one-way, inert content.
The raise and fall of the literate-mass-media era - presentation #1 (main - 20 min. version) from Shadows Revolution book
1. Shadows’ Revolution
Cracking the Content and Breaking the Molds.
Book Reading at SXSW
March 2010
Long web version
www.OrestesCarvalho.com available at Amazon.com
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2. While most revolutions are violent and
obvious…
The deepest ones are subtle.
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3. “We can’t solve a problem in the same
frame of mind in which we created it.”2
2 Adapted from a quote attributed to Albert Einstein.
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4. In other
words:
It is hard to see the fire
when you are inside the pot.
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5. Why did it take so long for music companies
to realize their waters were boiling?
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6. Will the newspapers follow the fate of
the music industry?
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7. What about books?
Will a Kindle-like gadget
replace them?
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8. What about the other media industries?
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9. What about the electronic equipment we
have to capture and play the old media?
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11. Think about a couple who has only had a carriage
as means of transport for their entire lives.
They never saw a car until we give them one.
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12. First thing they do is to attach their horses
to pull their new car.
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13. Second thing they do is to conclude…
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14. Second thing they do is to conclude…
…their old carriage was better!
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15. How can we understand a car and its implications
when all we know are carriages and horses?
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16. Like that old couple, many of us once said:
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17. Because we keep trying to pull new
ideas using our old horses.
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18. But sometimes…
old knowledge wrong conclusions.
old paradigms blinders
restrain restrain
our thoughts horse’s vision
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19. Then we talk about technology life cycles...
…clash of generations, behavioral fads...
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20. … still searching inside the box...
…locked inside the literate-mass-media paradigm.
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21. Because all these media products,
our behavior, and our way of thinking…
… were shaped throughout the literate-mass-media era.
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22. So, how can we get rid of our
literate-mass-media blinders?
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23. One way is to ask:
How was life on earth
before we got the blinders?
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24. Before Gutenberg and the printing press…
… conversation, people interaction,
collaboration…
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25. …knowledge was transferred through direct
apprenticeship…
…
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26. Before writing technology,
elaborated thoughts
would be lost.
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27. Before writing technology,
complex ideas
and institutions
that depended
on them.
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28. Here are the fifteen…
…oops…
I mean,
the ten
commandments.
Can you imagine laws, science, stock markets,
without writing?
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29. Writing:
- capture evanescent thoughts and ideas.
Press:
-reach and permanence.
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30. The Gutenberg Bible was one of the first
mass-manufactured products in this world.
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31. First mass medium. One to many model.
It opened the frontiers for
other future mass productions.
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32. mass production
new products virtuous affordable books
innovation cycle (& other products)
information spread
and retention
Incredible machines working for us.
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33. “The ease with which information
can be spread is critical to the rate at which
innovation occurs.”3
3 Adapted from a James Burke quote.
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34. Standard of living well beyond old village imagination.
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35. dramatic change in our way of
communicating and thinking.
Information = packaged good
coughed out by a mold.
Evanescent event became boxed content
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36. live information inert content
lost speed and fluidity of a
local debate
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37. live information inert content
lost speed and fluidity of a
local debate
Solutions as a solitaire exercise
result of participants static snapshots of
interactions thoughts
Learning
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38. live information inert content
lost speed and fluidity of a
local debate
Solutions as a solitaire exercise
result of participants static snapshots of
interactions thoughts
Learning
Social Individual
experience experience
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39. From oral to literate societies
Oral Literate
Circular world of sound. Cause and effect, linear
Round villages grid-like cities
“We moved toward the one-thing-at-a-time,
one-thing-after-another, and take-time-to-think
world.”5
5 Joshua Meyrowitz.
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40. From oral to literate societies
Oral Literate
Ever changing thought Feeling of Closure
Evanescent Event Boxed Content
Aggregative, Redundant, non- Analytical, Linear and
hierarchical thought Hierarchical thought
Collective Creation Authorial authority
Conservative and
Investigative and Conciliatory
Agonistically toned
Pragmatic, Empathetic
Individual Abstraction
Participation
Group of Listeners Lonely Readers
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41. After paper, other “mediums” came…
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42. Other mediums, which departed
from the written world
But they were still locked in the old
literate-mass-media paradigm.
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43. All following the same old formula
1. Capture a thought, a story, an idea.
2. Lock it inside a medium (paper, vinyl, film)
3. Make thousands of copies.
4. Mass advertise it. Mass distribute it.
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44. By end of 20th century:
-People had never known so much
never so homogeneous
prisoner of the same mold
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45. By end of 20th century:
-People had never known so much
never so homogeneous
prisoner of the same mold
Following like cattle
the editors’ choices and
the authors’ pretense truths.
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46. Despite departing from written world…
…still in the literate-mass-media paradigm
model: one-owns-the-truth, no-changes-anymore,
ready-to-produce-and-distribute-to-the-mass
IDEAS
&
TRUTH
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47. Despite departing from written world…
…still in the literate-mass-media paradigm
model: one-owns-the-truth, no-changes-anymore,
ready-to-produce-and-distribute-to-the-mass
IDEAS IDEAS
& vs. &
TRUTH TRUTH
old village orality , many-to-many, conversation mode
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48. But then came the digital medium.
It is different.
And it is taking us somehow
back to the old villages.
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49. In the literate-mass-media world…
…authors and audience are apart.
IDEAS
&
TRUTH
Loosely connected through one-way replicas.
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50. Digital medium era: Connection to the original source,
Rather than copies (or shadows of the real thing)
Driving participation and blurring the lines
between authors and consumers.
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51. Back to the village – in steroids.
Speed and fluidity of old conversations…
+ long-standing memory and reach
of the literate-mass-media world.
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52. Back to the village
I suggest you take a look at
this table online:
www.ShadowsRevolution.com
or in the book available at
www.Amazon.com
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53. One important take away...
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54. iPod, Kindle, Hulu:
just one small step into the future.
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55. digital connection to the publisher
+ speed…
… but still old model in a new medium
News News
Publisher
News News
News
Information still content stuck in insulated ponds.
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56. Transformation:
connect the ponds, open the flow…
inert content
New News
ever-changing
alive event.
…transforming the own nature
of the news, of the music and of the thought.
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57. It is not about the content
But about the contact.
It is not about being served the truth or the show,
but about building the truth and the show together.
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58. How do these changes affect our life?
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59. Implications
1st – It is not about content, but about contact. (preface)
pings radar screen
Shallow?
Different way to achieve depth: chunks, collectively
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60. Implications
2nd – Landgrab fight in the old media’s land. (chapter 5)
no protected turf: changing nature of competition
Music
Phone
Retail
packaged good
services
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61. Implications
3rd – The crumbling advertising mold . (chapter 6)
Old model: push / average / noisy / ineffective
New model: pull / personal / selective
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62. Implications
4th –From a Gaussian world to a Scale-Free world. (chapter 7)
Average-thinking
Static / slow / material abundance
averages have no meaning
outliers / dynamic / fast
intellectual and creative abundance
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63. Implications
5th – The IP pipeline and
the hypermedium.
(chapter 8 and 9)
Multiple one-way
media pipes and
scattered ponds
Vs.
Connected windows to
the outside world
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64. Implications
6th – The Digital Shelf (chapter 10)
Decouple content from the medium
Democratization of distribution and production
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65. Implications
7th – Paradox of choice? (chapter 11)
Instead of push a crowded set of pre-defined choices
calm and uncluttered shelf: with infinite choice
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66. Implications
8th – Mastermind design vs. bottom-up sprouting order
Blurring the lines between authors and audience
(Epilogue – The Breathing Mesh)
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67. The Breathing Mesh
2008 SXSW – A signature moment
Sarah Lacy interviews Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
A clash between two worlds:
Interview didn’t go well
audience didn’t like the way it was going
expressed disapproval
crowd outcry during and after interview
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68. The Breathing Mesh
2008 SXSW – A signature moment
Sarah Lacy interviews Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
A clash between two worlds:
Literate-mass-media Scale-free world
Top-down choices, one-way Collective choices, two-way
channel, author creates and channel, collective creation
audience consumes and consumption.
Top-down control. Audience Twitter. Find out what others
sit and listen or get up and are thinking. Participate.
leave. Influence the outcome.
Deliver pre-packed content Open up dialogue
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69. The Breathing Mesh
2008 SXSW – A signature moment
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Sarah Lacy.
After the interview:
Literate-mass-media Scale-free world
Bottom-up coalescent
Top-down judgment: “good
interpretation: “bad
content was delivered”
conversation”
Crowd was rude. Interrupted.
Didn’t allow her to deliver her
plans smoothly.
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70. The Breathing Mesh
2008 SXSW – A signature moment
Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Sarah Lacy.
After the interview:
Literate-mass-media Scale-free world
Bottom-up coalescent
Top-down judgment: “good
interpretation: “bad
content was delivered”
conversation”
Sarah Lacy was rude. Tried to
Crowd was rude. Interrupted.
control. Kept them apart.
Didn’t allow her to deliver her
Pushed content, when they
plans smoothly.
wanted service and dialogue.
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71. The Breathing Mesh
The change:
Literate-mass-media Scale-free world
Hero doing it all Millions doing small pieces
Pre-packed, pre-thought, Services and evanescent
one-way content experiences
Top-down-hierarchical-
Bottom-up sprouting order
mastermind design
“Now, I can record and release a song and a
month later if I don’t like a verse, I can change it.”
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72. The Breathing Mesh
We have opened the dams;
connected the ponds;
broken the molds;
released the content.
Instead of
watching the shadows projected on the wall,
we became part of the show…
…and a new kind of life
is emerging from the mesh.
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73. Shadows’ Revolution
Cracking the Content and Breaking the Molds.
Available at amazon.com
www.OrestesCarvalho.com
Releasing thoughts and stories from the
physical medium imprisonment.
Deposing the averages
March 2010 from “Shadowsmeaning.
Book: their Revolution”
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73
74. Links for other presentations and the book
1st – It is not about content, but about contact. (preface)
2nd – Landgrab fight in the old media’s land. (chapter 5)
3rd – The crumbling advertising mold . (chapter 6)
4th –From a Gaussian world to a Scale-Free world. (chapter 7)
5th – The IP pipeline and the hypermedium. (chapter 8 and 9)
6th – The Digital Shelf (chapter 10)
7th – Paradox of choice? (chapter 11)
book at amazon.com OrestesCarvalho.com
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Notas do Editor
Hi,Thank you for your time and attention. I’m presenting here some slides about my book: Shadows’ Revolution.This book is about how we are moving away from an era dominated by molds, mass-production and averages; an era when ideas and stories were called content and locked inside a medium.This book is about a revolution happening right now, probably the deepest one in the last 500 years…… however most people didn’t realize it yet.
This is because while most revolutions are violent and obvious…The deepest ones are subtle.Because they bring new concepts we can’t even see, understand or articulate well as they don’t fit in our old paradigms.Einstein said something like:
“We can’t solve a problem in the same frame of mind in which we created it.”In other words:
It is hard to see the fire when you are inside the pot.
Why did it take so long for music companies to realize their waters were boiling?
Will the newspapers follow the fate of the music industry?
What about books? Will a kinkle-like gadget replace them?
What about the other media industries?(TV, Movies, communications, advertising…)
And what will happen with all the electronic equipment we have in our houses to play the traditional media?Film cameras have gone.K7 tapes have gone.VCRs have gone.Whatwill happen to TVs, DVD players, Blue rays?
I want to do this: … think about a couple who has only had a carriage as means of transport for their entire lives.
They never saw a car until we give them one.
First thing they do is to attach their horses to pull their new car…
Second thing they do…… is to conclude…
Their old carriage was better.… it was lighter, easier to be pulled by the horses.The point here is…
How can we understand a car and its implications when all we know are carriages and horses?
Like that old couple, many of us once said:Photographicfilm is betterCDs are betterNewspapers are betterNothing is like holding and feeling a physical book
Because we keep trying to pull new ideas using our old horsesWe naturally use what we know to figure out what is coming.But sometimes our old knowledge take us to the wrong conclusions
And old paradigms can restrain our thoughts as the blinders restrain the horse’s vision.Than we talk about technology lifecycles..
… clash of generations behavioral fads…Without realizing we are still searching inside the box…
…we are still locked inside the literate-mass-media paradigm.Because all those media products, our behavior and our way of thinking…
Were shaped throughout the literate mass media era.
So, how can we get rid of our literate mass media blinders?(I like this picture…He seems pretty happy with those blinders, don’t you think?)One way is to ask:
How was life on earth before we got the blinders?How was life Before the literate mass media era…
Before Gutenberg and the printing press…ideas were built through conversations…… through direct people interaction and collaboration…
Knowledge was transferred… through direct apprenticeship.Before we had writing technology
if thoughts were not expressed in easily remembered forms and were not constantly repeated, they would be lost.
The absence of writing technology limited the development of complex ideas and the institutions that depended on them.
Can you imagine laws, science, … stock markets, without writing?This cartoon I did was inspired on Mel Brooks’ History of the world part I.It give us an idea of the value of writing.Because sound has meaning at the exact moment it is going out of existence.
Writing allowed us to capture evanescent thoughts and ideas.Then, the printing press allowed us to easily replicate the writing, increasing our ideas reach and permanenceand we now could spread them around the world
The Gutenberg Bible was one of the first ……mass-manufactured products in the world.The paper was the first mass medium.
The model – one to many instead of one to one – was much more productive.It opened the frontiers for other future mass productions.It fed a virtuous cycle where…
Mass production leads to affordable books that leads to Information spread and retention that leads to innovation and new products to be mass produced and so on…Through this cycle we were able to build incredible machines to work for us.James Burke said:
“The ease with which information can be spread…is critical to the rate at which change occurs.”
The printing press and the mass production have raised the standard of living… at a levelthat the people from the old villages would never be able to imagine.And it also triggered a dramatic change in our way of communicating and thinking…
Information became a packaged good being coughed out by a mold.An evanescent event became boxed content.
But once live information became inert content it lost the speed and the fluidity of old debates……where propositions are refuted right away and solutions come out as a result of interactions among the participants.
Learning became a solitaire exercise where we read static snapshots of thoughts in a printed book.What used to be a social experience became…
… became an individual experience.
When we moved from oral to literate societies,We moved from the circular world of sound expressed in its round villages and hutsTo the linear, cause-and-effect, grid-like cities.We moved toward the on-thing-at-a-time, one thing after another, and take time to think world.
In the book, I get into details of the major transformations that happened in our way of thinking when we moved from oral to literate societies…I suggest you read it at shadowsrevolution.com or buy it amazon.comIt helps us to think in a different frame of mind than the one imposed by the literate-mass-media paradigms.
After paper, other “mediums” came…
Which departed from the written world but were still locked in the old literate-mass-media paradigm.They were all following the same oldformula…
Capture a thought, a story, an idea.Lock it inside a medium (paper, vinyl, film STOCK)Make thousands of copies.Mass advertise it. Mass distribute it.This was a powerful model and by the end of the 20th century…
… general people had never known so much and their knowledge had never been so homogeneous, because it was made prisoner of the same mold.People were following, like cattle, …
the editors’ choices and WHAT THE AUTHORS BELIEVED WAS THE TRUTH.Despite the modern mediums departed from the written word, they were still in the model:
One owns the truth, no-changes-anymore, because we are ready-to-produce-and-distribute-to-the-mass.Whichis in sharp contrast with the old village orality…
…many-to-many, conversation mode where thoughts and truth were built collectively.But the digital medium is different.
An it is somehow taking usback to the old villages.
In the literate-mass-media world authors and audience were apart… loosely connected through the one-way replicas…
But in the digital world we are connected to the original source……rather than to copies, which are only shadows of the real thing.This is driving participation and it is blurring the lines between authors and consumers.And we are going back to the village. But is a village in steroids… (next slide)
… where we are getting back the speed and fluidity of old conversations…But keeping the long-standing memory and reach of the literate-mass-media world.
In the book I talk extensively about each change summarized in this table.It puts side by side the changes from Oral to Literate and now to Digital, or as I am calling it: hyper-oral societies.I suggest you take a look at this table online or in the book. It is very instructive. It helps to understand what is coming …when we see the changes within this framework.
… one important take away is…
iPod, Kindle, Hulu,Are just one small step into the future.Because they are just transferring content from the old media to a new media.
The digital connection to the publisher brings more speed.…But this is still the old model in a new medium.Information is still content stuck within insulated ponds.The big transformation happens when we connect the ponds and open the flow… (next slide)
Then… inert content morphs back into ever-changing ALIVE event.… transforming the own nature of the news, of the music and of the thought.It is not anymore an individual thought …but some kind of alive collective thought, collective on-going news…It is not anymore about the content and the information,… but about the contact and the connectivity… (next slide)
It is not anymore about being served the truth or the show,but about building the truth and the show together
So…How do these changes affect our life?Most of the book addresses the implications of these changes in our lives and businesses.In the next slides I will give you an idea about what you can read about them in the book.
The first implication is about the new paradigm on how we deal with our social networks: shorter contacts, with a lot more people.-> we keep in touch through pings, like in a radar screen.It seems shallow if we look at it through the lens of the old world.But, in fact it is just a different way to achieve depth: collectively; through chunks of information instead of long individual abstractions.There is a discussion about this implication in the book preface.
Another implication, discussed in chapter 5, is related to how the business landscape is being reshaped. The silos have gone down and the nature of competition is changing. Packaged goods are being transformed into services.
In chapter 6 there is discussion about a revolution in the advertising model, which is changing from: push, noisy, ineffective and directed to an average consumer to a pull model, driven by the consumer, more personal and selective.
Chapter 7 addresses how we are moving from a static and slow Gaussian world dominated by average-thinking, which has brought material abundance to a new dynamic and fast-changing scale-free world, dominated by outliers where the averages have no meaning, which will bring intellectual and creative abundance.
Chapters 8 and 9, discuss how the multiple one-way media pipelines that feed cds, dvds, movies, magazines, newspapers, and all different media into scattered storage places within our homes will be replaced by the IP pipeline, which will connect all the ponds. And all electronic equipment that play current media will be replace by screens, which will become connected windows to the outside world.
Chapter 10 shows how our supply chains are being reshaped since the content has decoupled from the medium and the digital shelf has democratized the distribution and the production of information products and services.
Chapter 11 defends the idea that overwhelming choice is a paradigm from the literate-mass-media world, which used to push a pre-defined crowded set of choices on consumers. It shows how google home page symbolizes the new world presenting infinite choices to be pulled from a calm and uncluttered shelf.
And finally the last implication is presented in the last chapter of the book. It somehow summarizes the whole idea of the book and outline the clash between the two eras.It is about how the top-down mastermind design is giving way to a bottom-up sprouting order, blurring the lines between authors and audience.
This chapter uses as an example what could be a signature moment for the new era that is coming. It happened in South by Southwest in 2008.Sarah Lacy was interviewing Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook.The interview didn’t go well. The audience didn’t like what was going on at the stage and expressed disapproval. They were vocal. There was a crowd outcry during and after the interview.In one side there was the old paradigm represented by Sarah Lacy.In the other side was the South by southwest audience composed by people who are riding the new wave of the new digital world and interactive media.
The different perspectives are illustrated in this table:While the literate-mass-media world is about top-down choices, one-way channel, author creates and audience consumes,…… The mindset in the new digital scale-free world is about collective choices, two-way channel, collective creation and consumption.While the old world is about top-down control. Audience sit and listen or get up and leave if you are not happy……. The new world has twitter. And the audience could find out what the others were thinking. And they want to participate and influence the outcome of the event.While the old world is prepared to deliver a pre-packed content,…… The new world want an open dialogue.Even after the interview you can still see the different perspectives remain.
Sarah Lacy declared that from her standpoint the interview was very successful because she was able to deliver very good content making Zuckerberg talk about important things… If this was an written interview, she probably would be right. But it was not. … and she didn’t realize that in this new world rather than top-down judgment what matters is the bottom-up coalescent interpretation of the crowd. And their evaluation was that the interview had been a “bad conversation.”Many people came on Lacy’s defense saying the crowd was rude. They interrupted. They didn’t allowed her to deliver her plans smoothly. But these defenses were also stuck in the old paradigm. Because in the new world the evaluation would be different:
In the new world and for that audience, Sarah Lacy was the one that was rude. She tried to control them. She kept them apart. She tried to push content down their throat when they wanted service and dialogue.
The world is changing.Instead of a hero doing it all – we are moving to millions doing small piecesInstead of pre-packed, pre-thought, one-way content.… we are moving to services and evanescent experiences.Instead of top-down hierarchical mastermind design……. We are moving to a bottom-up sprouting order.This is a quote I got from a musician:“Now, I can record and release a song and a month later if I don’t like a verse, I can change it.”His music is alive. It changes as he want.
“ We have opened the dams; connected the ponds; broken the molds; released the content.Instead of watching the shadows projected on the wall, we became part of the show…… and a new kind of life is merging from the mesh.
This is my last slide in this presentationThank you for your time and attention. And please, give me your feedback, share your thoughts.I don’t want this to be a one-way delivery but just the base, just the start of a great conversation.Thank you.
