0:00:03.002,0:00:08.012
The change in the architecture of the media [br]is completely connected to a change of the control

0:00:08.012,0:00:11.006
With the broadcast system you have one person in one station

0:00:11.006,0:00:13.008
deciding what gets put out over the airwaves.

0:00:13.008,0:00:17.068
When you have distributed network like the internet everybody can be a server.

0:00:17.068,0:00:20.088
There's no distinction between the broadcaster and the receiver:

0:00:20.088,0:00:22.004
every computer does both.

0:00:22.004,0:00:27.012
You can take your home laptop and run a server off of it that can distribute movies and music

0:00:27.012,0:00:31.068
and webpages and email in the same way that the biggest computers at google can.

0:00:31.068,0:00:31.076
there's no fundamental difference between the computers they have in iraq in their server rooms

0:00:31.076,0:00:35.052


0:00:35.052,0:00:38.004
and what you have on your desk

0:00:38.004,0:00:39.006
In the old system of broadcasting,

0:00:39.006,0:00:42.076
you were fundamentally limited by the amount of space in the airwaves

0:00:42.076,0:00:46.044
you could only send out 10 channels over the airwaves in television

0:00:46.044,0:00:48.068
or even with cable you had 500 channels.

0:00:48.068,0:00:50.076
On the internet, everybody can have a channel;

0:00:50.076,0:00:53.008
everyone can get a blog or a MySpace page;

0:00:53.008,0:00:55.048
everyone has a way of expressing themselves

0:00:55.048,0:00:57.072
and so what you see now is not a question of

0:00:57.072,0:00:59.028
who gets access to the airwaves,

0:00:59.028,0:01:00.084
it's a question of who gets control

0:01:00.084,0:01:02.008
over the ways you find people.

0:01:02.008,0:01:05.044
You start seeing power centralising in sites like google,

0:01:05.044,0:01:08.006
these sort of 'gatekeepers' that tell you where on the internet you want to go

0:01:08.006,0:01:11.006
the people who provide you your sources of news and information.

0:01:11.006,0:01:15.028
so its not only certain people have a license to speak

0:01:15.028,0:01:16.068
now everyone has a license to speak,

0:01:16.068,0:01:19.004
it's question of who gets heard.

0:01:19.004,0:01:22.068
So one of the biggest questions we're facing in a world of many speakers

0:01:22.068,0:01:24.004
how do you find what's good?

0:01:24.004,0:01:27.036
Are we gonna go to a system like the old media where you go to CNN

0:01:27.036,0:01:29.028
and they pick a handful of people to focus on

0:01:29.028,0:01:30.028
and you read what they say

0:01:30.028,0:01:32.002
or are we going to go with something more like the internet

0:01:32.002,0:01:35.048
where everybody has a chance of being heard, a more democratic system.

0:01:35.048,0:01:38.044
One of the most interesting technologies for doing something like that

0:01:38.044,0:01:40.008
is a system called collaborative filtering,

0:01:40.008,0:01:43.068
where everybody expresses their opinions on what they like and what they don't like

0:01:43.068,0:01:47.044
and the computer tries to match you up with other people who have similar preferences

0:01:47.044,0:01:50.076
and recommend you things that they also like that you didn't know about before.

0:01:50.076,0:01:52.084
It's the same kind of system you see on Amazon

0:01:52.084,0:01:55.016
where people who bought this book also bought this book

0:01:55.016,0:01:58.000
people are trying to experiment that not only with books

0:01:58.000,0:02:01.012
but with blogs, web pages and news stories all across the internet,

0:02:01.012,0:02:04.004
they're trying to find ways and things that you've never heard of before

0:02:04.004,0:02:06.002
and bringing them in front of you

0:02:06.002,0:02:08.004
Mass media had this fundamental paradox

0:02:08.004,0:02:10.036
because it was aiming at a huge audience

0:02:10.036,0:02:12.076
but it wanted to convince everybody they were an individual

0:02:12.076,0:02:15.036
you see all these ads on television all the time like

0:02:15.036,0:02:17.006
'buck the trend, buy these jeans' right!?

0:02:17.006,0:02:20.028
and it's on a show that 4 million people are watching,

0:02:20.028,0:02:24.000
you're not going to buck a trend by doing what 4 million other people are.

0:02:24.000,0:02:27.004
Now that the internet is actually making these nitch things possible

0:02:27.004,0:02:29.004
the mass media is incredibly threatened

0:02:29.004,0:02:33.048
no longer this idea of bucking the crowd and being your own

0:02:33.048,0:02:36.028
it's no longer just a theory you can actually do it on the internet

0:02:36.028,0:02:40.056
And what we're starting to see is tools that take power away from the big conglomerates

0:02:40.056,0:02:42.048
and start to distribute it to small groups.

0:02:42.048,0:02:47.028
And so there are a bunch of issues in a system like that there are questions of funding you know,

0:02:47.028,0:02:50.052
how will these small groups get paid and how will the random blogger be able to live

0:02:50.052,0:02:53.006
in a way that an investigative journalist can now

0:02:53.006,0:02:55.092
because there's one giant source of advertising

0:02:55.092,0:02:59.088
you know there are question finding people, how will I be able to find the stuff I'm interested,

0:02:59.088,0:03:02.008
and the stuff that's trustworthy and reliable

0:03:02.008,0:03:04.072
and so for each of these there are new technologies

0:03:04.072,0:03:06.068
people are trying all kinds of different things

0:03:06.068,0:03:08.028
and all of these say different things about the internet

0:03:08.028,0:03:12.004
there is still experimentation in this, since everybody can just go up and start a website

0:03:12.004,0:03:15.068
with a new piece of technology that try and solve one of these problems

0:03:15.068,0:03:18.068
We're seeing lots of different possibilities, lots of different funding models

0:03:18.068,0:03:23.044
lots of different recommendations systems and who knows what will work best

0:03:23.044,0:03:25.008
we have a chance to try it all and see what falls out

0:03:25.008,0:03:27.088
So there are a couple of interesting funding models:

0:03:27.088,0:03:30.006
One of course is this standard model of advertising,

0:03:30.006,0:03:35.008
you go to a bunch of big corporate sponsors and instead of having them fund a television show

0:03:35.008,0:03:36.004
you have them fund your webpage

0:03:36.004,0:03:40.000
but a more interesting one is you do the same thing with nitch groups

0:03:40.000,0:03:45.012
instead of going to IBM/Ford or a big company, and having them buy a banner on your website

0:03:45.012,0:03:47.068
you go to people that actually care about the readers you have

0:03:47.068,0:03:50.076
if you're a design weblog you go to design companies

0:03:50.076,0:03:53.088
if you're a political blog, you go to other politicians

0:03:53.088,0:03:58.004
you have a very targeted narrow group of people who are really interested in the subject,

0:03:58.004,0:04:01.076
thats an audience advertisers really love

0:04:01.076,0:04:04.068
another possibility is to turn directly to your readers for support

0:04:04.068,0:04:07.072
you see blogs say, I wanna go to a trip to New Hampshire

0:04:07.072,0:04:10.044
to cover the american political conventions

0:04:10.044,0:04:12.000
will you support me?

0:04:12.000,0:04:13.004
and the readers pour in money

0:04:13.004,0:04:16.072
these people are very dedicated they feel like they have a personal connection

0:04:16.072,0:04:17.008
with the person writing

0:04:17.008,0:04:21.000
they are eager to spend money to support it!

0:04:21.000,0:04:23.088
Another thing is that you simply work of volunteer labor

0:04:23.088,0:04:27.004
you have people that have a day job thats an expert in a subject

0:04:27.004,0:04:30.036
and they just enjoy talking about it so they rate stuff in their free time

0:04:30.036,0:04:31.044
and publish it on the internet

0:04:31.044,0:04:34.000
or they have readers who read their site and contribute stuff

0:04:34.000,0:04:36.068
and it gets compiled into one exciting source.

0:04:36.068,0:04:39.004
So I think there are lots of interesting experiments,

0:04:39.004,0:04:41.000
people are trying lots of different ways

0:04:41.000,0:04:48.006
One of the errors you had with television, right, could only provide one level of interest

0:04:48.006,0:04:52.036
it was funded based on adertising not on how much people cared about the programme

0:04:52.036,0:04:56.028
advertisers were going to pay the same no matter how exciting or how compelling

0:04:56.028,0:04:58.016
or how interested an audience was in a show

0:04:58.016,0:05:01.092
so what you ended up with was fairly boring shows that appealed to lots of people

0:05:01.092,0:05:04.004
because that's what advertisers wanted

0:05:04.004,0:05:06.016
they wanted lots people watching the shows

0:05:06.016,0:05:08.028
whereas in a normal market economy what happens is

0:05:08.028,0:05:10.036
if you really want something you pay more for it

0:05:10.036,0:05:12.028
you just can't do that with television.

0:05:12.028,0:05:15.004
So one of the interesting things about broadcast is that a lot of what you like

0:05:15.004,0:05:17.004
depends on what other people like

0:05:17.004,0:05:19.024
there are only so many shows out there

0:05:19.024,0:05:20.002
they are all kind of bland

0:05:20.002,0:05:22.000
so what happens, you have these megahits

0:05:22.000,0:05:27.000
like American Idol or lost, where everybody at the water cooler is talking about this show,

0:05:27.000,0:05:30.012
so you have to watch it because otherwise you can't keep up with them

0:05:30.012,0:05:33.056
whatever social factors get involved

0:05:33.056,0:05:35.068
you have this sort of process of rich gets richer

0:05:35.068,0:05:40.036
one thing takes off because thats what everybody else is doing!

0:05:40.036,0:05:43.072
One nice thing about the internet is that it allows for so much more variety

0:05:43.072,0:05:48.000
that nitch products can get so much more attention and interest

0:05:48.000,0:05:50.076
So they've the run the numbers and this this proven mathematical fact

0:05:50.076,0:05:54.068
that as long as some percentage of what you care about is whether other people

0:05:54.068,0:05:58.068
like it or now you're gonna end up [br]with this patterns of hits and failures

0:05:58.068,0:06:01.072
if you have two things which are equivalent in quality,

0:06:01.072,0:06:04.068
one of them is liked by one more person [br]than the other one,

0:06:04.068,0:06:06.012
you're going to go that one

0:06:06.012,0:06:08.004
there's some small chance that you're going to go to that one

0:06:08.004,0:06:09.076
and everybody's going to start going to that one

0:06:09.076,0:06:11.016
and all of a sudden you have harry potter

0:06:11.016,0:06:14.088
this one book plucked of nowhere that suddenly becomes this massive mega-hit.

0:06:14.088,0:06:18.012
not because it's a hundred million times better written than every other book

0:06:18.012,0:06:21.000
but simply because everybody's reading it

0:06:21.000,0:06:23.008
and putting stuff on the internet doesn't change that,

0:06:23.008,0:06:27.004
you still care about what your friends like, still wanna read what everybody else is talking about,

0:06:27.004,0:06:30.076
ou still wanna do what's popular because you think maybe other people have a valid opinion

0:06:30.076,0:06:34.002
and maybe you wanna talk to them about it [br]maybe you want to join part of this community

0:06:34.002,0:06:37.024
but whatever your reason is, [br]as long as you care about what other people opinion

0:06:37.024,0:06:38.008
you're going to end up with these hits.

0:06:38.008,0:06:39.004
You just have this social signifier that everybody cares about

0:06:39.004,0:06:41.068
You just have this social signifier that everybody cares about

0:06:41.068,0:06:45.008
everybody's watching American Idol [br]doesn't matter how good the show is

0:06:45.008,0:06:49.048
I mean it has to be somewhat decent so people watch it, [br]but once everybody's watching it,

0:06:49.048,0:06:54.002
talking about it, you know, [br]it suddenly becomes this megahit for no real reason,

0:06:54.002,0:06:56.008
right, just because it's a social phenomenon

0:06:56.008,0:07:00.006
and what television does, it chops off the tale and it throws away all the other shows

0:07:00.006,0:07:03.004
people would like but don't care enough about to be megahits

0:07:03.004,0:07:06.068
and instead pours all of its money into these cheap produced shows

0:07:06.068,0:07:08.072
well you can't get rid of hits, right

0:07:08.072,0:07:11.004
it's a fact that people would wanna do what their friends are doing

0:07:11.004,0:07:15.052
you can't avoid that but what you can do is say [br]there's the whole rest of the world out there

0:07:15.052,0:07:19.000
there's a whole rest of what people care about other than what everybody else is doing

0:07:19.000,0:07:22.004
Everybody has their own particular interests everybody has something that fascinates them

0:07:22.004,0:07:25.072
and what the internet does is it allows them to 'do' that

0:07:25.072,0:07:29.008
to get involved and find other people who share these things

0:07:29.008,0:07:33.024
one of the exciting things about Wickipedia [br]is that it doesn't just have articles on

0:07:33.024,0:07:36.002
you know, 100 most popular things or 1000 most popular things

0:07:36.002,0:07:39.028
you can pick the most obscure subject in the world [br]and there's an article about it

0:07:39.028,0:07:43.004
Because for EVERYTHING, [br]there's someone who cares a great deal about it

0:07:43.004,0:07:46.006
and that's what television, [br]that's what radio doesn't provide, but the internet does!

0:07:46.006,0:07:50.008
it provides a way for you to get in touch [br]with those other people who really

0:07:50.008,0:07:52.048
care about this completely obscure thing

0:07:52.048,0:07:56.004
It doesn't just go into the direction of topic, [br]it goes into the direction of time

0:07:56.004,0:07:58.052
You can go back in time and find all the shows that have been canceled

0:07:58.052,0:08:00.084
find all the articles that have been deleted

0:08:00.084,0:08:04.004
you can go back and find everything that has been lost in major culture

0:08:04.004,0:08:05.048
and it's got a place on the internet

0:08:05.048,0:08:09.068
Youtube music videos from the 70s and the 80s [br]that you can't find anywhere these days

0:08:09.068,0:08:11.048
you can watch at your leisure

0:08:11.048,0:08:13.068
I think lessening the power of the hits

0:08:13.068,0:08:16.072
bringing down the things from the top [br]and making it more egalitarian

0:08:16.072,0:08:18.008
is the something we should always strive for

0:08:18.008,0:08:21.008
it may be really difficult it may not be super possible

0:08:21.008,0:08:24.008
but it's something to hope for, to drive for

0:08:24.008,0:08:26.072
and what that means is

0:08:26.072,0:08:31.002
throwing away as much as possible all the things that give you hints about

0:08:31.002,0:08:34.004
you should do this because other people like it

0:08:34.004,0:08:37.052
it's very tempting [br]when you're building a website or programming system

0:08:37.052,0:08:39.088
is to start sorting things that are really popular at the top

0:08:39.088,0:08:43.012
but all that does is, that it makes it less democratic and less fair

0:08:43.012,0:08:48.028
you have to have continual pressure, [br]to try and pull things from the bottom from the tale up

0:08:48.028,0:08:51.044
give everybody a chance to look at everything and if you do that

0:08:51.044,0:08:53.072
maybe, you won't get completely rid of hits,

0:08:53.072,0:08:55.068
but you can start to ???? some of their problems

0:08:55.068,0:08:59.004
I mean that's one power of data mining [br]is that construct to find obscure subjects

0:08:59.004,0:09:01.088
that you wouldn't have found [br]simply because they are not popular

0:09:01.088,0:09:03.092
you know one of the tools of recommendation

0:09:03.092,0:09:06.092
can be to pull you to the less popular stuff on the tale

0:09:06.092,0:09:10.000
The random article button on Wikipedia [br]is really cool in this sense

0:09:10.000,0:09:13.024
you can just wake up every day [br]and read about some completely random topic

0:09:13.024,0:09:17.008
that you never heard of except for the fact [br]that there's an article on the Wikipedia about it

0:09:17.008,9:59:59.000
and boy are there some completely random topics on Wikipepdia