Carr's Reaction to Benkler

From Carr's post on Benkler and Calacanis, I wanted to point out this small section:

The invention of the radio - the original "wireless" technology - spurred the creation of a vast network of amateur broadcasters, but that nonprofessional network was soon displaced by a smaller set of commercial radio stations that were better able to fulfill the desires of the listening public.

I quoted the section above because it's a discussion that I posted on earlier, whether the commercial media really delivers content that the mass audience really wants. I don't think it does, as Benkler asserts, so I disagree with Carr's notion that that commercial radio stations were better at fulfilling the people's desires.

Carr does good analysis as Calacanis noted recently but it doesn't mean he's perfect. This is just one part of Carr's post, which is well-thought out, so I don't think I'm joining the blog herd that so quickly jumps on people's mistakes. Remember what blogging is about (i.e. read Scoble and Israel's Naked Conversations), it doesn't need to be perfect but it should be coniserdate and self-correcting. The Gillmor Gang's 7/17 podcast, with Calcanis himself, addresses the flaming bandwagon that it so prevelant in the blogosphere these days.

I wanted to point that section of Carr's post because it address a question that I'm particularly interested in and because there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the topic of mass media serving the public good. You can disagree with people and point it out without disparaging the person or their otherwise great post. A good lesson for the entire blogosphere.

Comments

[brad burnham]

I have not yet found the time to get into Yochai's new book but am familiar with several of the papers on which it is based. Nicholas Carr's argument assumes that this medium is like the radio medium. It is not. The Internet is a micro chunked medium. Earlier mediums aggregated large groups of users around content, this medium seems to aggregate users around services that dissagregate content. These services, whether based on search, or tagging present the most useful bits to audiences of one. If that turns out to be an enduring characteristic of the medium, I can imagine the professionalization of services that refine and present content, but I do not see how one will professionalize the process of content creation.

[chris]

Brad, thank you for the comment, I appreciate it. I found the time to get into Yochai’s book but not the time to finish the entire thing. Reading it is a double-edged sword: it’s extremely thought-provoking but it takes extremely focused attention to keep up with the concepts. You can’t read this book on the metro with background noises or distractions, you have to dedicate 100% to every page or you become lost real quickly.

Likening the internet to the radio is indeed a false premise because “the pattern of amateur activity springing up in the wake of the invention of a new communication medium, only to be followed by increasing professionalization and commercialization” has usually occurred because of the medium’s underlying scarcity (printing press and distribution for newspapers, or spectrum and infrastructure costs for radio and TV). The internet doesn’t have the traditional scarcity component, as Chris Anderson eloquently details in The Long Tail, so commercialization of the internet medium isn’t as inevitable as Carr’s argument suggests.

As Fred, Umair, and Adam Curry have pointed out, we’re moving towards a world of attention scarcity. It’s in this world, where disaggregated content appeals to audiences of one, that the personal and uncommercial recommendations and collaborative filters (friends, blogs, Last.fm) become even more important to us. More professional filtering and delivery of that personalized, micro chunked content but not necessarily more professionalized creation of that micro chunked content.

Do you think Calacanis’ decision to start paying Netscape.com’s elite diggers and taggers is indeed an experiment in trying to professionalize the process of content creation? These people are more likely part of the “refine and present content” process because they’re scouring the web for original content and then helping promote that original, (usually) unprofessional content. Do you think a blog network, like Gawker or Weblogs Inc., could be considered an attempt to professionalize the process of content creation?