Clay Shirkyon's piece entitled "Gin, Television and Social Surplus" on his Here Comes Everybody blog intrigued me when quoted by Barry last week, and even more so when I finally got a chance to read it in its entirety yesterday.
The most revealing point he makes is a simple one about his four year old daughter, who interrupted her DVD-watching to look for the television's missing mouse:
Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.
I came back to this article later in the day, after reading another article about Hollywood whining. This time it's Jeffrey Katzenberg whining about the fact that theater's haven't rushed to adopt new 3D movie technology, and for that matter, even plain old digital projection technology.
Sorry Jeffrey, but here's something that movie theater owners know about what four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. And they're putting their money where their knowledge is.
And by the way Jeff, putting in some whiz-bang 3D effects isn't "including" me, or allowing me to share. Clicking on a mouse or a button at any time and getting more information or offering an opinion is the minimum requirement for including me and allowing me to share. Youtube clips include me and allow me to share. Mashups of a clip from your movie with a clip of me commenting and playing music from a third party in a funny way includes me and allows me to share.
Oh, that's right. I forgot. Your business model is to sue people who do any of those things.
Your business model is that I don't get to participate, I get to watch. And you get to tell me what, where, how and for what price. You and your colleagues are so immersed in that business model that you can't see it is dying. Dying because of the four-year-olds who know that any screen without a mouse attached to it is broken by definition, and who will be your customers of the future. They know that all the screens you have used to shove content at us for so many years are broken by definition. And they know that the broken screens include those Hi-Def, 3D, THX-equipped screens you're whining about movie theaters not wanting to install. They know, or at least are beginning to realize that their business is a declining cash cow that just may not be worth putting too much new money into. At least until such a time as you develop both the mechanism and desire to give every movie viewer their own mouse.
This, by the way, is one of the few reasons I'm optimistic about the future. Our four-year-olds know that actvity and involvement, not passivity, is the way to live. This isn't just something they think or believe. It's what they know about life. It's what just about everybody under 16, and an increasing number of older people have come to know. They know it's not enough to be spectators Not enough to just vote every two to four years. Not enough to "vote with your pocketbook" and sell stock -- a company share that you own -- when the hired guns running it fail to run it for your best interest.
I suspect they'll be the ones to toss our current generation of "leaders" -- the ones in both political parties and virtually all political organizations around the world who depend on us being mostly passive -- right out the door and into the gutter where they all belong all the others who have turned us into a world of zombified passive lapdogs over the past 70 years.
Who benefits? Well, Google obviously, along with many others. In the investment world, the beneficiaries will be the shareholders who will increasingly demand (and ultimately be given) the right to a say in how their company is managed and by whom. In the government world, I think the gain will be for all of us who want to be involved, and the loss will be for everybody who wants to sit around Katzenberg-style and whine about what you're not being given.
The key thing to consider when looking for opportunities, I think is also highlighted in Shirkyon's piece:
We're looking for the mouse. We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?"
-btc
