Ged Carroll

Category: media | 媒體 | 미디어 | メディア

It makes sense to start this category with warning. Marshall McLuhan was most famous for his insight – The medium is the message: it isn’t just the content of a media which matters, but the medium itself which most meaningfully changes the ways humans operate.

But McLuhan wasn’t an advocate of it, he saw dangers beneath the surface as this quote from his participation in the 1976 Canadian Forum shows.

“The violence that all electric media inflict in their users is that they are instantly invaded and deprived of their physical bodies and are merged in a network of extensions of their own nervous systems. As if this were not sufficient violence or invasion of individual rights, the elimination of the physical bodies of the electric media users also deprives them of the means of relating the program experience of their private, individual selves, even as instant involvement suppresses private identity. The loss of individual and personal meaning via the electronic media ensures a corresponding and reciprocal violence from those so deprived of their identities; for violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.”

McLuhan was concerned with the mass media, in particular the effect of television on society. Yet the content is atemporal. I am sure the warning would have fitted in with rock and roll singles during the 1950s or social media platforms today.

I am concerned not only changes in platforms and consumer behaviour but the interaction of those platforms with societal structures.

  • Salam Pax & mesh networks

    Today I talk about two things blogger Salam Pax and mesh networks, the latest thing in wireless networking.

    First off, a bit of history. The first film based on a weblog is in the pipeline. Many of you may have read in the news last year about Salam Pax, apparently someone blogging in Baghdad during the last gulf war. The blog despite doubts over its authenticity was turned into a book. Now the film rights of the book have been taken up. Coverage here from the BBC Online. Salam Pax was the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem.

    Friends and journalists who went to Network+InterOp the networking and communications show in Las Vegas have provided some mixed feedback.

    – Vendors dwarved the amount of customers at the show. This is being touted as an indication that business customers are not there to buy. I am inclined to think that it is much more of a cultural shift in organisations, when your job could disappear abroad, how can you justify a week long company shopping trip in Las Vegas when you can get the information off the web or by reading journals? Shows have been more of the business culture in the US than in Europe, with the exception of a few events like drupa and CeBIT in Germany

    – Lots of people where showing cool technology that will never see the light of day because computer users are in business and the home move at a slower basis than technology advances

    – Mesh networks had a higher profile. Mesh is one of them buzzwords that many people have been kicking around for a good while. One way of looking at it is that it allows a number of wireless devices be they a laptop with a wireless card or an airport hub to act as one network. This would allow wireless hotspots to be grown and managed more easily in businesses or in the home. I expect more of a push around this in the next few years, though it would struggle to be used with present technology to distribute high quality video around the home. More wireless related content here.

  • Apologies and Connection

     Since my last post there have been lots of interesting things happening like the media being surprised that systematic torture has been occuring in Iraq. I’ve got some news for you its war, that means that its dirty, bloody and thoroughly unpleasant – try reading the works of Wilfred Owen or watching the Battle of Algiers to get a sense of how nasty it can get.

    On RTE radio one this morning, they had an expert comment about some CIA torture manuals that had been found. The main themes were that you used peoples fear against themselves – rather than torturing them, use the threat of torture because people had a greater capacity to withstand pain than they realised. This approach makes sense given established behavioural bias towards risk aversion. Risk aversion is one of the key cues used in behavioural science, it doesn’t surprise me that it manifests itself in this scenario as well.

    Sony has launched its Connect service, a rival to Apple’s iTunes Music Service. According to the Washington Post the service is ‘unworthy’ of the corporation who gave us the Walkman(TM). If it gets the kiss of death from Walter Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be more salarymen falling on their swords than a Kurosawa samurai film. As the New Yorker put it: “someone whose judgment can ratify years of effort or sink the show.” More media related content here. 

    Lastly owe those of you who read this blog regularly an apology. I have not been contributing here much because I am in the middle of selling my house and moving closer in to London. Any of you who have dealt with British estate agents will have felt my pain. More news on the woes of house buying in the future.

  • Adult entertainment industry + more stuff

    Spare a thought for the ‘performers’ in the adult entertainment industry. According to the Sydney Morning Herald and Reuters, two of the industry’s stars have been found to be HIV+; the first since 1999. Although the mainstream American porn industry has a rigorous testing regime orchestrated by the AIM Foundation where 1,200 stars get tested every three weeks the two people had managed to have sex with 48 other performers since their last test three weeks earlier. A 60-day halt has been called to filming so that anyone who has been in contact with these performers during this time (and their partners etc) can be tested to keep the outbreak under control.

    The HIV has been blamed on a non-condom shoot one of the performers was involved in held in Brazil. The industry has been especially conscious of HIV since John Holmes the ‘Elvis of porn’ died of AIDS in the late 1980’s, bringing to an end what many view as the industry’s golden era. What I think is more frightening is the trend towards gonzo, low rent amateur material that is the rising star in the industry since the advent of the web. This part of the business does not undergo the same rigorous regime as its mainstream counterpart is a health timebomb waiting to go off.

    Amateur pornography is proving particularly corrosive and problems like this in the adult entertainment industry is down to cost cutting and performer poverty. Given the rise of tube sites and the globalisation of porn content product things may get a lot worse in the adult entertainment industry before it gets better.

    Piracy of adult content isn’t a subject that gets the same kind of consideration and discussion as record labels or Hollywood.

    While we are on about things of an industrious nature Rainier PR have launched the Cambridge Confidence Index. According to them this will cover both business and quality-of-life issues.

  • Fopp vinyl update

    Further to my posting regarding Fopp and its vinyl section. As you can see from the mail below they will still be keeping their LPs, it is only 12″ singles that they are no longer selling.

    Hi

    just so you know it’s just the 12″ singles that were are losing not the LP’s

    Hopefully, you’ll still shop at Fopp.

    Cheers

    Fopp
    1 Earlham Street
    Covent Garden
    London
    WC2H 9LL
    T: 020 7379 0883
    F: 020 7240 8355
    E: earlham.street at fopp.co.uk
    W: www.fopp.co.uk

    THIS E-MAIL AND ANY ATTACHED FILES ARE CONFIDENTIAL, PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND MAY BE LEGALLY PRIVILEGED. If you are not the intended addressee or have received the e-mail in error,
    any use of this e-mail or any copying, distribution or other dissemination of it is strictly prohibited.
    If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately and then delete the e-mail.
    E-mail cannot be guaranteed to be secure, error free or free from viruses. Neither the sending company nor its employees accepts any liability whatsoever for any loss or damage which may be caused as a result of the transmission of this message by e-mail. If verification is required, please request a hard copy version.

    —– Original Message —–
    From:
    To:
    Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 11:01 PM
    Subject: store_londoncoventgarden – Posted : 22:01:51 27/03/2004

    =================================================
    store_londoncoventgarden – Posted : 22:01:51 27/03/2004
    =================================================
    First Name : Rorsharch
    Email address : rorsharch at rorsharch.com
    =================================================
    Enquiries
    =================================================
    Enquiry CD :
    Enquiry Vinyl :
    Enquiry DVD
    Enquiry Book :
    General Enquiry :
    Hi, I was very disappointed to hear today that you will be getting rid of
    the vinyl section. You have gone to the trouble of building it up and having
    a top quality team to run it alongside a really good selection, not a pile
    of crap like many stores. I go to Fopp because I can buy my DVDs, vinyl and
    books under one roof. SAVE THE VINYL or I’ll shop elsewhere. Who do I need
    to take it up with at your head office?
    =================================================

    More culture related content here.