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Publishing Without Walls
Picking up the pieces from our previous installment (“A Deep Dive Behind the Editorial Wall“), let’s consider what publishing looks like without walls.
My hunch is that there are a lot of people who are completely unfamiliar with the idea that it is possible to publish something without some kind of advertising — and here, again, I guess I need to remind some readers of its duplicitous nature (if this is new to you, please go back and check out some of the basics involved).
Without attempting anything like a historical overview, let me go back just a few decades to note that one of the landmark establishments of print publishing were directories — first and foremost the ubiquitously well-known telephone directory. My hunch is that originally these were maintained by and large by the telephone companies, which were sort of responsible for a variety of telephone services. Maintaining a telephone directory — especially the so-called “yellow pages” was discovered to be a quite lucrative business … and note that one could argue that it was based on 100% ads (if it weren’t for the fact that there was indeed absolutely no non-advertising content). In a quite similar vein, websites like ebay and craigslist are viewed exclusively for the paid content (ads) — and there is practically no other content available. I predicted long ago that natural language sites would ultimately become more reliable sources of information than brand name sites — and indeed, even today, the most well-known brand name site (Google) cannot ignore a site like hotels.com when people search for “hotels” (and the number of such examples has been consistenly and constantly increasing).
Yet this isn’t the end game. Increasingly, these topical sites will become more nuanced and differentiate a wide variety of stakeholders participating with a wide variety of aspects related to the central topics of engagement. In the long run, sites will organize into networks of semantically related activity (to stick with the previous example, e.g. “hotels” and “travel”). Again, in the long run, brand name sites like Google will not be able to compete with natural language. Most of the leading brand names online have woken up to this fact, and in a “last ditch” effort many of the brand name companies have even attempted to own language (the two largest registrants of proprietary TLDs [see also “Auctions + Markets for Domains, Domain Names + TLDs“] are none other than Google and Amazon). Apparently, these companies intend to dupe enough “suckers” into believing the TLDs they own are not owned in order to exploit the suckers even more. Natural language cannot be owned — it simply routes around attempts of ownership.
As a result, we now find ourselves at the cusp of new interpretations of many business ethics. Exploitation is no longer the ruling mantra. I believe the future will increasingly belong to organisations which pay attention to the way everyone is a stakeholder, everyone is engaged (more or less), and ultimately, everyone is increasingly focused on sustainable solutions that answer questions such as “how would we like to deal with this situation?” (see also Chapter 21, “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1“)
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A Deep Dive Behind the Editorial Wall
At the moment my brain is brimming with a bunch of interconnected ideas … and this one needs to be addressed first of all.
Many years ago, when I first published my controversial ideas (way before I revised the nomenclature in “Hope & Change: Flipping the F-word & Removing the Old-Fashioned R-word” [ https://remediary.com/2020/11/06/hope-change-flipping-the-f-word-removing-the-old-fashioned-r-word ], and also several years after I first began using the controversial nomenclature), I “pointed out” that one of the defining characteristics for irrational media is the so-called editorial wall between content and advertising.
This mythical wall is one of the primary signs of Western propaganda — and I will return to many aspects of the vast and far-reaching implications … but for now I want to (try to) focus on how it can be that so many people are so completely deluded and at the same time so completely unaware of their own delusions.
Let’s start with the basic business model of advertising-supported media:
In the vast majority of cases, this means that the editorial content is used as “filler” to create spaces to plaster advertisements onto.
https://remediary.com/2014/11/09/definition-how-to-define-retard-mediaThat is, the so-called “wall” is not only permeable, its permeability is in fact the whole “bright idea” behind the business model. Let me add at this point, that there has been a significant shift regarding the so-called “traditional” publishing industry.
The traditional brand names are in fact quite bankrupt. Their own advertising model has been hollowed out by Google’s proprietary algorithms which match advertisers to users. Yet since most Google users lack adequate literacy skills to recognize that all of the results they see on Google are essentially links to Google advertising (whereas the rest of the WWW is not only “below the fold” but rather buried deep beneath the dung heap, far beyond the last page of ads), they actually believe in most of these advertising links, because they believe that the brand names are indeed reliable sources of information — which they usually aren’t.
The result is the the media landscape seen via Google is an innumerable bunch of bankrupt invalid and crippled companies, utterly lacking in any resources whatsoever (beyond the supposed value of their “traditional” brand names). Google itself keeps these companies on life support, because the Google Ads which appear on these “brand name” websites provide ample revenue for Google, with enough left over as table scraps just to keep the dogs alive and hungering for more.
I do think I need to admit that over the past years I have made a mistake in condemning all advertising. That was never my intention — except, perhaps, to the degree that the model is based on the notion that there are two (or more) kinds of content, which can be neatly separated and divided by some kind of insurmountable wall. This smoke and mirrors sort of hocus-pocus was (for me) simply quite obviously bullshit. I think the reason why the bullshit continued to sell like hotcakes is largely the idea that if one company was selling bullshit, another company could sell something better — the competitive economy, free market capitalism and all that jazz.
Of course, this is the house that Facebook built. While it has arguably become quite successful, it is no match for the behemoth Google. Not even Amazon can compare with the machine that owns the minds of so many, such religious followers. This is not what true competition looks like. This looks more like the 1% owning 99% of the wealth.
I think it would be a waste of time to investigate how we got here — suffice it to say: my hunch is that there were probably a lot of smoke-filled back room deals involved, and the fact that some of the world’s leading governments also made quite significant contributions to the playbook is nothing short of undeniable. My question has always been, and remains to this day: How do we get out of this mess?
Google is undeniably the world’s leading “social dilemma” [ https://connect.data.blog/2020/09/16/herding-millennials-a-new-agenda-for-tech ]. It is not the only one, but shy of being a monopoly, one can hardly say that the landscape is anything but monopolistic.
My proposed solution has been (and remains) to ignore brand names — to instead rely on the power of natural language. If anyone has another idea, I’m all ears! Until then, I will keep working on my next installment(s). In any case, I am not ready to give up.
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A Tale of Two Segments
Once upon a time, where you lived had a huge impact on your life. Now, not so much. Today, what you think about, what you spend your time with, what occupies your mind and your mental energy matters a lot more. In this chapter, I aim to do a little thought experiment. I am going to tell a story that I have told many times before, but I will change some things around. What follows is undoubtedly fiction, and the fictionalization is intended so as to make it more palatable for a wider audience.
Before I begin, I want to note that the story is essentially about a power asymmetry — you could think of it as being about the relationship bestween a “master” and a “servant”. However, there are actually more than simply two roles involved, and so solving the puzzle as to which roles are portrayed by which characters is left as an exercise for the reader.
Without further ado, let’s jump into our summertime short story created for your vacation reading pleasure!
A Tale of Two Segments
Our company is working towards building a machine that will satisfy every human desire.
It will cater to every wish, every need, every thought that may cross a person’s mind.
It will help people achieve their goals and dreams — even if they can’t precisely say what it is.
The machine will be very polite, in order not to offend the feelings of the human. For example, if the human says “ugh”, the machine might ask “Did you mean ‘enough’?” (instead of blatantly blurting out something like “‘ugh’ is undefined — in other words completely meaningless! Please use whatever brain you have in order to utter something more meaningful to the best of your ability!” This way, the human can simply respond with “yes” or “no”, thereby being less taxing on the human’s limited resources).
Once human and machine have reached agreement on the task at hand, the machine will begin to offer solutions. If the human is not satisfied with a solution, the machine will offer another solution. If the human is still not satified, the machine will keep offering more solutions. If the human has rejected 10 solutions, the machine will attempt to resolve the dissatisfaction by comparing the human with other humans’ behaviors. If, for example, another human had become satisfied by resolving a different task, the machine will simply state that “Other humans have been very happy with these other tasks to resolve”. This way the human will not be forced to switch the goal, but merely be alerted of the fact that other humans have indeed been able to become satisfied. Some humans may very well be amenable to changing the task at hand in order to reach the desired satisfaction.
In the vast majority of cases, humans will be able to reach some level of satisfaction after just a few iterations, The machine is constantly being trained to better satisfy the vast majority of humans.
There are, however, some exceptional cases. A very small number of humans have very specific, unique or preposterously great expectations. An even smaller number remain obstinate and obsessively fixated on their own desires. This number is so small that these very few cases can easily be considered completely insignificant.
Early results show that our machine has become very successful very quickly. Early indications of growth prospects show that this market leading technology will be coming soon to a market near you.
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Canonical Rules and Other Phenomena
The other day, one of my online colleagues wrote a post with some tips about “How To Refocus When You Can’t Achieve Your Dreams” [ https://new-lune.com/2022/07/21/how-to-refocus-when-you-cant-achieve-your-dreams ]. Even though I quickly replied with a comment, mine was not the first — she seems to have struck a nerve.
I quite often refer to literacy — and many believe this, being simply a statistic, is a simple matter. I believe it is “in fact” anything but a simple matter.
Let’s begin with that simple statistic. Let’s imagine it were 90%. What would that tell us? 90% of some population are able to do something — but what? Sign their name? Read a sentence in English? Read a sentence in Chinese? Answer a question? Cross the street? Understand the Constitution of the United States of America?
Let me now focus a little more on just one of these examples. In most countries — at least most “developed” countries — on Earth, there is some concept of what many English speakers would refer to as a “crosswalk”. There may be rules and regulations which govern the use of these little tidbits of infrastructure. Both the laws written on paper and the symbols used in the crosswalks themselves are quite obviously written language. Yet I think very few people would consider the ability to cross the street a sign of literacy.
Above and beyond that complication, there are other complications. In Germany, a very highly developed and very well regulated economy, there is a well-known quip about gravestones with an epitaph reading “I had the right of way”. In other words: being able to cross the street is not only a matter of being literate concerning the laws governing crosswalks, but also a matter of the way other people behave. And not only that: whereas in Germany a pedestrian might be scolded for standing at a crosswalk without crossing the street, in some other countries simply walking across the crosswalk might be interpreted as naive and foolish.
Image “Rubin’s Vase” via “Rubin vase” [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase ] Whenever there is any kind of social order, this also involves the boundaries [1] inherent in that order. What is beyond that line? We need [2] to consider not only what is directly in front of our noses, but also what is the background, the context, the situation, the “other” stuff.
[1] See the Indigenous News blog [ https://indigenous.news.blog ] for more topics related to such boundaries (and in particular the boundary between indigena information technology and propaganda information technology)
[2] For further elaboration, see also the homepage text @ wants.blog [ https://wants.blog ] (and also further discussions related to “want” vs. “need” @ that site).
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Chill to Follow
There is a dim glow on the horizon, it is a wallowing in the comfortably numb state of golden slumbers.
Humans are not all that special.
We may be human, but we’re still animals.
Steve Vai, “Liberty” (from the album “Passion and Warfare”)Like animals, we do not expect things “out of the ordinary” to happen. Instead, we expect that tomorrow will be another day much like today, or at least much like a typical day for the season we are in. Even in the realm of scientific discovery, our so-called “scientific” method is based on probabliity statistics, basically assuming that if something is likely to happen in the here and now, it will probably also be likely to happen over there, again (soon). Our brains have developed to recognize patterns (via the repetitions we observe). The sun rises over and over again, rain comes from clouds, thunder follows lightning “… and they lived happily ever after” comes at the end of stories. We may never hear a different ending, because in that one out of the ordinary case, we simply won’t survive.
When Jimi Hendrix prouldly answered the questions “Are you experienced?” and even more poignantly “Have you ever been experienced?” with “Well, I have”, he was not referring to experiencing the age of 28, or 29, or whatever number beyond the meager age of 27. That is not to disqualify the large number of valuable insights he shared at that tender age. It just puts his insightful wisdom somewhat into perspective.
As I mentioned above, we are not very prone to seek out perspective. We are much more chill than that. If we see a piece of cornbread lying on the shelf, what would motivate us to go looking for another piece of cornbread somewhere else? Nature has always worked fine so far, why should tomorrow be any different?
Ah, well this is the point I have been waiting for: nature does provide us with some exceptional cases. Some of these cases seem so exceptional that you might wonder whether they are truly real facts or merely fantastic fictions. Holocaust deniers exist. QED
Likewise, liars exist. Crazy people exist. Manipulation is not beyond the realm of possibility … especially not if someone can “get rich quick” that way, maybe even without ever getting “caught“. Once upon a time, our elders used to tell us such stories — and for good reason, namely: to warn us about what might or at least what could happen.
Today, fiction and news are no longer quite as distinct as they once seemed to be. We are presented with documentation about so-called “facts” by machines which are portrayed as completely objective and as truth without any skepticism, doubt or perhaps even just plain reasonable thinking. To question a machine’s so-called “results” seems much like heresy.
Is that so? What if I were to provide some counter-factual evidence? Try this:
What’s the point of blogging if they keep you from engaging with other bloggers? One of my friends maintains that it is pretty much useless for me to provide such evidence, or to appeal to rational thought, the scientific method or crap like that. He argues that people will gladly buy into a myth as long as believing that myth will make their life simpler, easier, more enjoyable, happy, fun or whatever.
Who can deny the willingness of lemmings to run off the edge of a cliff?
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Responsibility for Online Behavior
Over the past few years, I have significantly increased my online engagement. I could trace this all the way back to my decision to refocus my attention to online work in general (which was already quite a long time ago), but I think it would be more correct to say it was more a result of my recognition of the work other people have achieved. The first of these achievers who impacted my work was Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. Through his network (Omidyar Network), which I joined because I was under the impression that there might be opportunities to co-develop (specifically in the “health” field), I met many very brilliant people working in a very wide variety of fields — and I learned a lot. It was through this engagement that I became more aware of the significance of “open source” software generally, and WordPress in particular. Up to that point in time (shortly before the release of version 3), what little web development I did on my own was either encoding straight HTML by hand, or occasionally developing very specific programs to create a large number of static HTML pages.
The big change came quite gradually, because at first I was very careful about dipping my toe into WordPress waters. Since most of my career so far has revolved around interdisciplinary work, I was not put too off by crossing boundaries between e.g. developing versus using software. I would contact plugin developers and ask whether it would also be possible to get the “plain vanilla” version with some “chocolate sprinkles” … and thereby we together would actually co-develop the software.
As WordPress has grown, the software has become more complex. I am probably the last person anyone should ask about the intricacies involved, but my impression is that it is slowly becoming more difficult to make individual changes without impacting some other functionality somewhere else. When reflecting on this, I find it amazing that something so complex is even possible at all as an open source project.
Yet I started out this post with the more typical WordPress “user” in mind — and I am also that person: Press a few buttons, start a new blog. Type in a few words, add some bells and whistles publish a new post. For most bloggers, these are quick and easy procedures and that is the simple “End of Story” scenario. Except it isn’t, not actually.
Engagement involves both rights and responsibilities. Yes, this is intended to harken back to my question to Matt and Josepha @ WordCamp Europe (WCEU) in Porto just about a month ago (see Chapter 21, “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1“.
Yet this post here is more focused on individuals and the individual human behaviors of WordPress users (than it is about e.g. large corporate organizations such as the global corporations I was alluding to as I presented the question). When I interact with other WordPress users, I feel I can distinguish between the few who I consider literate enough that they recognize that communication is not simply a matter of publishing, but also following up with the responsibilites of online engagement.
This includes, for example, not merely moderating [1] comments but also actually responding in some way. This is where I feel the novice user quite often lacks the literacy skills required to respond appropriately. Let me say this loud and clear: it is no valid excuse to say that you overlooked something you could not find due to the software you are using. If you use software to enable you to do something, then if it enables you to remain ignorant of something, that is not the software’s fault — no, it remains your own ignorance which was merely facilitated by using the software.
The software user remains responsible for using the software. There are no excuses.
Likewise for other aspects of the software being used. Some people refer to a particular kind of literacy (e.g. “software literacy”). I feel this focus on a “specialized” kind of literacy is counterproductive, insofar as today, we no longer need specialists to function as intermediaries online any more than we need telephone operators to connect cables or flip switches to make a telephone call.
[1] “moderating” leaves a lot of “wiggle room” — for example, some might interpret this to mean to consider only comments that pass the tests applied by the software; others might consider all comments in order to ascertain which comments ought to approved or rejected
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One Remarkable Thing About Each & Every Audience is its Consumer Behavior
If you’re able to convince a group of people to pay you to tell them something, they will probably believe it. This was the fundamental principle of the publishing industry’s marketing plan. Yet since the quality of the content contained within this game plan has been disqualified, the so-called traditional publishing industry’s business model is now missing a foundation to build upon.
Yet the revolutionary flood which started out as simply “THE INTERNET” has hardly even begun.
Let’s unpack this with a more detailed look at this thing many people refer to as “audience”. From prehistoric times, when people shared stories while seated in circles around a campfire, audiences were a very tightly knit social phenomenon. Even a few decades ago, dinners with high-priced plates (or seats or whatever) were not a rarity. Audience implicitly had a ticket price. Not always, of course — recieving propaganda through a religious service is normally free and open to (almost) anyone. Yet I do feel that the explicit definition of audience does sort of require there to be a boundary between what is audience versus what isn’t audience. The walls of such “walled gardens” need not be especially obvious or clear, but the whole notion of the term “audience” would seem rather absurd if it were not exclusive.
Yet again, that is exactly what THE INTERNET is. Online, all costs are more or less negligable. Esther Dyson wrote an excellent article about this a long time ago. [1]
I myself have no doubt whatsover: All irrational media will sink, only rational media will survive. I am also willing to wager that graphical icons — insofar as they are regulated by intellectual property laws — belong in the irrational media camp. [2]
Steve Martin, “The Jerk”: Things are going to start happening to me now. Now that the notion of exclusive audiences have become superfluous, we now live in an environment in which truly “the whole world is watching” — and increasingly, the whole world will be selecting rational media. More and more, the whole world will increasingly publish. Anyone willing to bet that illiteracy is long for the world will ultimately fail. Only the fittest will survive, so literate and rational will become a very big win-win.
[1] See e.g. “Intellectual Value by Esther Dyson” [ https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/int-prop/dyson-wired-7-95.html ]
[2] In case you feel lost, let me reiterate that irrational media (see “Hope & Change: Flipping the F-word & Removing the Old-Fashioned R-word” [ http://remediary.com/2020/11/06/hope-change-flipping-the-f-word-removing-the-old-fashioned-r-word ] are based on IP law (such as “brand names”, i.e. registered trademarks). So, for example: what might motivate a consumer to prefer “ABC” versus “XYZ”? There is no rational basis for such a preference (consider the movie “The Jerk”, regarding the significance of a name appearing in a telephone book [image via https://media.giphy.com/media/Fv6vMdP1XbUru/giphy.gif ] ). In the long run, such irrational preferences will not hold water, and so they will die out.
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Self VS. Spy
Ah, Summertime … 🙂
In any case now (as a follow-up to last week’s “Moving Out Beyond Levels of Data“) might be the best time to yet again bring up the spyware issue (which of course ultimately harkens back to the entire rational — versus irrational — media debate [1] ).
Irrational media cannot deliver valid data of any kind. Period. End of debate. End of story. QED. Whatever, nevermind.
OK — did you say you want some more? Well, here’s some more ….
For data to be valid, there must be some kind of validity test involved. Irrational media cannot be tested in any way, because irrational media is inherently whimsical: there is no basis for irrational media other than the whim(s) of its creator(s). Imagine some royal whatever sitting on a throne and deciding whether or not to pardon the French.
Well, pardon my French but WTF is this royal God-like Oracle to tell me (or the French) whether or not to click on a link? I don’t need no propaganda machine or search engine to tell me what is right (versus what is not right or whatever), and certainly not some irrational string of letters such as Google!
I can think for my self myself!
I can even spell. I am sort of literate — no, I did not mean (nor do I mean) to give Google any data right now.
Which rational person would willingly give data to spies? About themselves? To spies who themselves openly declare themselves to be irrational? Which organization which claims to be irrational would ever be able to muster valid data?
OK, now here is the kicker (for today):
Which person (or company or organization or whatever) in their right mind (in case they have one) would pay an irrational enterprise for invalid data?
You don’t have to look far — just Google it! (whatever you Google, I bet all the top results are “brought to you by” their sponsors [2] )
… and the living is easy …. 🙂
[1] actually, there is no debate — it is actually more of a preference for ignorance (as in “ignorance is bliss”) over enlightenment (as in literacy — for more background, see Chapter 20, “Language & Community — Some More or Less Clearly Defined Definitions“)
[2] of course Google hardly tells anyone that links shown as so-called “organic results” linking to sites upon which advertising is displayed (brought to you by Google) … is pretty much the entire business model of Google (apart from the more recent spyware business)
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Moving Out Beyond Levels of Data
I have been trying to review some of my disparate ideas, mulling them over in order to reach some kind of synthesis.
Again since most of these ideas seem to be kind of controversial, even just mentioning one of them very likely would trip up the argument severely, simply because most of my audience — basically “normal” people — are not ready to have their entire world outlook changed so drastically. Just consider the definitions post I posted a few weeks ago (Chapter 20, “Language & Community — Some More or Less Clearly Defined Definitions“) as a recent example.
This morning I have come up with an idea which has been more or less “back burner” thinking for several years already. The general topic might (in some circles) be referred to as “data literacy”, yet that term is quite commonly used and does not really focus on issues related to the scientific method, measurement and similar research methods (such as data collection) used in science … which have been traditionally been referred to as “levels of data” (but which been neglected over the past few decades since someone seems to have convinced most of the world that the quality of data is no longer important, maybe saying something like “the sheer quantity of data alleviates the need to pay attention to its quality” [or lack thereof] ).
Quite to the contrary: I think we need to pay even more attention to data than the traditional four levels of measurement approach (which refers to “nominal”, “ordinal”, “interval” and “ratio” scales of data).
I’m so broke I can’t even pay attention
https://quotes.fitness.blog/2022/06/18/im-so-broke-i-cant-even-pay-attentionMuch in the same way that I remarked that marketplaces differ with respect to “How we do things here” (see Chapter 21, “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1“), we also need to pay more attention to the quality of the data we use. If the data are bogus, then the conclusions we reach from the data are also bogus (decades ago, this was referred to as the “GIGO” problem — “garbage in, garbage out”).
I think I will think some more about this before I introduce any “quick fixes” — perhaps I’m taking some inspiration from Josepha’s answer to my own question. 😉
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Self Determination
Among the people I met up with in Porto last weekend (see chapter 21, “Social Business Regulation: Introduction & Socio BIZ Rule #1“) was a woman from Latvia who spoke really excellent English (probably because — as she mentioned in passing — she now lives in England). She noted that she feels it is wrong the way some people expect everyone on Earth ought to be able to understand (and speak) English. Unfortunately, she had to leave abruptly to catch up with some of her friends, otherwise I would gladly credit her for her insightful remark (which I can’t, because I don’t even know her name).
One thing which I feel often gets overlooked in the “free will” vs. “determinism” argument, and which in particular especially gets overlooked in regard to the term “self determination” is that it is obviously a far-fetched dream: Not one being (whether living or dead) on Earth has ever managed something like self-determination. We are born into the world with a very large number of “pre-set” settings. Let alone all of the genetic presets, we are born into our native environments, our native habitats, our indigenous information technology and systems. And this seems completely natural — i.e. that nature should work this way. While eskimos have many words for snow, it is Americans (from the USA) who invented and created marketing plans for eskimo pies. Being born into a community means having your indigena (native information) settings set. You acquire a world view from the community you were born into. You do not actually practice anything like “self determination”. I plan to reflect on this more and also to write about this more at the indigena information blog; here, I wish to point out that it is probably in resistance to propaganda information technology that indigena information technologies give rise to a demand for self determination.
In this vein, I also wish to remark on my experience discussing indigena information technologies — primarily the concepts of native and “native speakers” — with a wide array of vendors for multilingual information services. I was amazed at the wide variety of awareness of the issues related to working with so-called “natural” languages, ranging from complete ignorance through quite lacking sensitivity all the way to measured concern (and perhaps even a willingness to engage). By and large though, these projects were all driven by the dream of building a “product” with which one could simply press a button in order to get results, and whether these results were satisfactory or not was apparently more of a secondary issue than a true focus of attention.
Social Business (WordPress weblog)
Socio Business blog 