I have been a long-time fan of Marshall McLuhan. Some of his well-known insights and aphorisms are immensely powerful. It is profoundly true that media are extensions of man; they extend our senses to take us to distant places and perspectives. McLuhan’s best known tenet, the medium is the message, is something that we all implicity understand in our media-rich world, though we rarely express it. When I first read The Medium is the Massage, which came out in 1967, it looked to me almost exactly like the bold typographical style and layout that Wired magazine was thought to have pioneered in the late 1990s. McLuhan had been there three decades earlier, and he was acknowledged as the “patron saint” of the magazine.. His influence has been profound, but now 26 years after his death, his thinking is embedded into the way we think rather than being broadly acknowledged.
While I’m not a big reader of biographies, I have just finished reading Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger , by Philip Marchand, who did an outstanding job at capturing the life and whimsy of the man. One theme that comes across very strongly through the book is how incoherent most of McLuhan’s speaking and writing was. This is not a surprise to those that have tried to get their heads around even some of McLuhan’s more mainstream work such as Understanding Media, however this seems to have been pervasive through almost all his work. The thing was McLuhan had no interest in being coherent or consistent – his approach was to spin off a million ideas and see which ones landed. Many of those that worked with him recognized both his genius, and that he was virtually crazy.
One episode that illustrates McLuhan’s extraordinary prescience is that in 1955, well before he became famous, he set up a company called Idea Consultants. One of their slogans was “A headache is a million-dollar idea trying to get born. Idea Consultants are obstetricians for these ideas.” The company never sold any ideas or got any work. However one of McLuhan’s often brillliant ideas at the time was to create a TV program that would select a business problem, build it into an interesting format, then offer a reward for the viewer who came up with the best approach. McLuhan thought that this would be far more likely to result in a good solution than hiring any group of consultants, however good they were. Today, this would be considered an innovative, pragmatic, and viable project. Maybe it will happen in the next few years. Fifty years ago, clearly the world was not quite ready for it.
One new thing I learned about in reading the book was what McLuhan called the Tetrads, or the “laws of the media”. it stirkes me that these “laws” are actually highly relevant to strategic analysis of any industry which is undergoing rapid change. I still have to dig up the original material to interpret it properly, but the following is my loose interpretation of McLuhan’s Tetrads.
1. Any innovative technology enhances or accelerates some of what existed before.
[Q: What does it enhance or accelerate?]
2. Any innovative technology erodes or renders obsolescent some of what existed before.
[Q: What does it erode or obselesce?]
3. Any innovative technology retrieves something that has become obsolescent.
[Q: What does it retrieve that has eroded or become obsolescent?]
4. Any innovative technology, when pushed to the limits of its potential, reverses or flips into something entirely new.
[Q: What does it reverse or flip into?]
McLuhan used the telegraph as an example. Again adapting his work:
1. The telegraph amplified the reach of events, and changed daily news to instaneous news.
2. The telegraph rendered opinion based, local broadsheets obsolescent as people sought faster, broader news.
3. The telegraph brought back group involvement and discussion around events, which had been fading.
4. The telegraph flipped from one-on-one communication into multi-point broadcast, and reversed the corporate hoarding of information.
I am a strong believer in strategic questions (as briefly illustrated in the Future of Media report). Asking the right question is most of the way to getting the right answer. The strategic questions raised by McLuhan, if applied effectively as part of a strategy process, can be immensely valuable in understanding how specific new technologies will change us, and the opportunities they create. I will play with these questions more around some current issues, and will share anything interesting here.
Analyzing media industry networks
By Ross DawsonOne of the more interesting and original aspects of the Future of Media Report 2006 was the Media industry network analysis. I have broken this out as a separate piece here, as many people interested in industry network analysis may not have delved into the report. This research was performed by Laurie Lock-Lee of CSC, who has done much innovative work on industry network analysis. Below is the Media industry network analysis section of the Future of Media Report. Note that this analysis is very much a first pass at the subject, and we intend to take this analysis substantially further. Sponsors for the next phase of this analysis would be very helpful!
MEDIA INDUSTRY NETWORKS
One of the most powerful approaches to understanding industries and how they are evolving is to examine them as a network of relationships. The media industry network maps presented here compare the network of the largest corporate participants in the media landscape in 2005-2006, to the situation five years earlier.
Diagram explanation
Each circle represents a company. The thickness of the lines between organizations represents the number of joint ventures, consortia, and other strategic alliances reported in the press over the one-year period 1 July to 30 June, as found in Factiva. As such the map shows activity rather than existing relationships, making it a view of how dynamic companies are. The size of the nodes reflects how many new relationships were reported in this period. The diagram is constructed so that the companies most central to the network are depicted at the center of the image.
Media industry networks 2005/06
Media industry networks 2000/01
Diagram commentary
What is first apparent from this analysis is that the media industry is far more deeply interconnected than it was five years ago. The growth in alliances and joint ventures reflects that it is increasingly necessary to work with other companies, for example in content and distribution deals. Microsoft has retained its position as most central to the media industry networks. New media companies such as Yahoo!, Google and eBay have rapidly become more prominent and central, with others that are more active including Apple, CBS, Viacom, and Sony Ericsson. Time Warner has developed new and strong relationships with Microsoft, CBS, and Google, while AT&T, despite its growth, has become less central. The mobile device manufacturers have become more integrated into the network, illustrating their shift to become true media players rather than simply selling phones. Overall the telecommunications companies remain relatively peripheral, which will need to change if they are to succeed in moving beyond selling connectivity. Print participants remain fairly isolated.
Babies and blogging
By Ross DawsonAny day in the next couple of weeks I will become a father for the first time. I’ve been told countless times that it will change my life, but I think I’ll have to experience it to understand… My wife and the soon-to-be mother is the adorable Victoria Buckley. She is an extremely talented jewellery designer, with a shop and fabulous collection of pieces that draw on many inspirations, including fairy tales, myths, and legends. Victoria’s landmark outlet is in Sydney’s Strand Arcade, with clients worldwide, and exports to top-end retailers in the US and elsewhere on the cards. It’s been very interesting to me that Victoria’s and my work, while they may seem to be very different, are actually highly aligned. Archetypes, meaning, and communication are common threads in both of our work, and we find much to share in insights between our businesses.
I will soon enough find out how becoming a father impacts my blogging. I have never been quite as active a blogger as I’d like, with urgent work commitments daily often coming before my desire to blog on interesting things I’m seeing or doing. However with the Future of Media Summit now out of the way, and baby on the way, I’m deliberately creating space for myself, so it’s possible that between changing nappies and earning a living I’ll be able to blog a little more than I’ve been able to so far this year. Writing a blog post is a nicely packaged, manageable task. I doubt Trends in the Living Networks will become a baby blog, but expect a few references to babies along the way…
Microsoft kickstarts the Live brand
By Ross DawsonMicrosoft has just launched Windows Live Spaces, replacing MSN Spaces, its social networking and blogging site which has over 100 million visitors monthly, and offering a substantial facelift and new features. While Microsoft has had a wide suite of Live offerings in Beta for many months now, this is the first Live product that has been launched as a working product on a large scale. Live Messenger is out of Beta, but it has not replaced MSN Messenger, and is for now running in parallel with it. Given the breadth of MSN Spaces’ usage, this launch is the most powerful way Microsoft can kickstart the Live brand, and start gradually moving its array of Live products into the market. Ray Ozzie, now Chief Software Architect at Microsoft, spoke to financial analysts last week about Microsoft’s vision. This is well worth a read, as it provides a coherent view on how committed Microsoft is to web services in the broadest sense. Windows Live is absolutely central to Microsoft’s shift to web services, and the launch of Windows Live Spaces is just the beginning of what will be a major blitz on the Windows Live brand and product suite over the next couple of years.
Marshall McLuhan and the laws of the media
By Ross DawsonI have been a long-time fan of Marshall McLuhan. Some of his well-known insights and aphorisms are immensely powerful. It is profoundly true that media are extensions of man; they extend our senses to take us to distant places and perspectives. McLuhan’s best known tenet, the medium is the message, is something that we all implicity understand in our media-rich world, though we rarely express it. When I first read The Medium is the Massage, which came out in 1967, it looked to me almost exactly like the bold typographical style and layout that Wired magazine was thought to have pioneered in the late 1990s. McLuhan had been there three decades earlier, and he was acknowledged as the “patron saint” of the magazine.. His influence has been profound, but now 26 years after his death, his thinking is embedded into the way we think rather than being broadly acknowledged.
While I’m not a big reader of biographies, I have just finished reading Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger , by Philip Marchand, who did an outstanding job at capturing the life and whimsy of the man. One theme that comes across very strongly through the book is how incoherent most of McLuhan’s speaking and writing was. This is not a surprise to those that have tried to get their heads around even some of McLuhan’s more mainstream work such as Understanding Media, however this seems to have been pervasive through almost all his work. The thing was McLuhan had no interest in being coherent or consistent – his approach was to spin off a million ideas and see which ones landed. Many of those that worked with him recognized both his genius, and that he was virtually crazy.
One episode that illustrates McLuhan’s extraordinary prescience is that in 1955, well before he became famous, he set up a company called Idea Consultants. One of their slogans was “A headache is a million-dollar idea trying to get born. Idea Consultants are obstetricians for these ideas.” The company never sold any ideas or got any work. However one of McLuhan’s often brillliant ideas at the time was to create a TV program that would select a business problem, build it into an interesting format, then offer a reward for the viewer who came up with the best approach. McLuhan thought that this would be far more likely to result in a good solution than hiring any group of consultants, however good they were. Today, this would be considered an innovative, pragmatic, and viable project. Maybe it will happen in the next few years. Fifty years ago, clearly the world was not quite ready for it.
One new thing I learned about in reading the book was what McLuhan called the Tetrads, or the “laws of the media”. it stirkes me that these “laws” are actually highly relevant to strategic analysis of any industry which is undergoing rapid change. I still have to dig up the original material to interpret it properly, but the following is my loose interpretation of McLuhan’s Tetrads.
1. Any innovative technology enhances or accelerates some of what existed before.
[Q: What does it enhance or accelerate?]
2. Any innovative technology erodes or renders obsolescent some of what existed before.
[Q: What does it erode or obselesce?]
3. Any innovative technology retrieves something that has become obsolescent.
[Q: What does it retrieve that has eroded or become obsolescent?]
4. Any innovative technology, when pushed to the limits of its potential, reverses or flips into something entirely new.
[Q: What does it reverse or flip into?]
McLuhan used the telegraph as an example. Again adapting his work:
1. The telegraph amplified the reach of events, and changed daily news to instaneous news.
2. The telegraph rendered opinion based, local broadsheets obsolescent as people sought faster, broader news.
3. The telegraph brought back group involvement and discussion around events, which had been fading.
4. The telegraph flipped from one-on-one communication into multi-point broadcast, and reversed the corporate hoarding of information.
I am a strong believer in strategic questions (as briefly illustrated in the Future of Media report). Asking the right question is most of the way to getting the right answer. The strategic questions raised by McLuhan, if applied effectively as part of a strategy process, can be immensely valuable in understanding how specific new technologies will change us, and the opportunities they create. I will play with these questions more around some current issues, and will share anything interesting here.
Global discussion on the future of media
By Ross DawsonThe Future of Media Report 2006 has certainly achieved its intention of generating discussion with dozens of posts and also good media coverage. So far there has been discussion in five languages from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Peru, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, UK, and the US (these are representative links only – in most of these countries there have been many references to the report).
Here is the full list of links to the report and Summit website (Technorati).
[UPDATE: Over 7,000 copies of the report have been downloaded.]
There were two particularly thorough and thoughtful analyses of the report, the first of the reviews from Robin Good at Master New Media, and another one from Sanjana Hattotuwa – these are both very much worth reading. I’d like to pick up on and respond to just a few of their comments.
Robin says:
Absolutely a fair comment Robin. The reason we limited the research focus of the report to US, UK, and Australia was primarily one of resources. While Future Exploration Network is a global organization, these are our “home” countries. In creating the report we considered whether to include other interesting media markets, which could have included China, Brazil, Scandinavia, or many others. However the report was pulled together very quickly, and we simply didn’t have the time and resources to extend beyond these three markets for the research portion of the report. The other themes and issues, such as the strategic framework, absolutely apply in all media markets, and it’s certainly been encouraging how global the response to the report has been. We would love to do a report either truly more global in scope, or addressing specific markets such as East Asia, continental Europe, or Latin America, however this would require some resources. So if any organizations are interested in sponsoring or getting involved in a report that would go further than the original one, definitely get in touch with us.
Robin says:
Sorry, yes this is worth elaborating. In 1999-2004 the global media and entertainment industries grew by 28.5%, while global GDP increased by 18.7%. If these growth rates continue, the share of media and entertainment of the global economy will double in 32 years. Since these years include both the dot-com boom and subsequent bust, they may not be representative. I too believe that it will take less than 32 years, but it’s an interesting extrapolation. While the global economy is likely to grow at a strong pace (barring disasters), the shift to intangible value will definitely accelerate.
Robin says:
Read more →
Mobile traffic data will pressure local radio
By Ross DawsonGoogle has just released maps for use on mobiles, that indicate traffic congestion with four color levels from green to red, across 30 US cities. This is one of those applications that has been obvious forever, and it’s only been a question of time until it’s implemented well (which is not quite yet). When people are navigating traffic and choosing alternate routes, they have until now been guessing which way to go, having available at best a trickle of information in from the radio. In fact, traffic information is one of the main reasons that people listen to local radio. Once you can get far superior traffic information from other sources, you might as well go to the radio that gives you your preferred music or talk, which is unlikely to be local radio. Next steps include not just current traffic intensity, but also predicted traffic intensity. As I wrote in my book Living Networks, UK company Applied Generics has a product called RoDIN24, that anonymously monitors the movement of mobile phones relative to cell towers in order to provide extremely detailed and live views not just of where traffic is slow (mobile phones moving slowly), but also where traffic is converging to. Beyond that, computers will be able to predict reasonably accurately how long different routes will take, enabling drivers to make route choices without gazing at screens too much. Of course, these predictive devices will play off against each other – if every one made the same recommendation to their drivers, that route in turn would become congested. But in the long run, in congested urban traffic we will see the different possible routes taken even out, so that it takes a similar time whichever of the major possibilities you choose. Resource Shelf gives an overview of other traffic data resources. The US dominates, with some services also in the UK. As with good GPS mapping, there will be a several year lag for effective mobile traffic services to reach most other developed countries. As with many of these applications, it is the cost of mobile data that is a key driver. Cheap mobile data in the US is driving these kinds of applications. In countries where mobile data is very expensive, including Australia, it will, unfortunately, take a long time for mobile applications such as traffic data to take off.
Being in two places at the same time
By Ross DawsonI really like this. A Japanese researcher has created a lifelike doppelganger robot of himself, which he uses to do lectures at a university an hour’s drive away from his home, thus saving himself the commute. He is the live voice of the robot, and can see through its eyes. Pickups on his mouth and lips control the movement of the robot’s mouth while it is speaking. Apparently the robot looks very human – certainly the photos are hard to pick as a machine (though the machine does look less friendly than the man). While the cost of creating this kind of robot will never get very low, as every one must be custom-made, the implications are staggering. If the robot really is good, this is a big step beyond videoconferencing, and arguably even teleimmersion. Robot duplicates could be put on airplanes in lieu of people to go to distant meetings, for example. I will definitely explore the possibility of using one of these for keynote speeches I’m asked to deliver in distant lands, though I suspect it will be a good while before I have a duplicate of myself, unfortunately. Who hasn’t dreamed of being in two places at the same time?
The social nature of Search 2.0
By Ross DawsonRichard MacManus has part 1 of a very nice overview of “Search 2.0” companies and technologies, written by Ebrahim Ezzy of Qube. There are many facets to this category of search, however to my mind almost all of them are social or collaborative in nature. Google of course already implements this through the way it aggregates user behaviors in its ranking. However you get the same results when you do a search on Google, whoever you are. Central to the next phase is that you start getting results that are relevant to you and your interests. While there are many approaches to this, I believe that doing this well is most likely to be based on understanding people’s profiles relative to their search and information usage patterns – in other words social networks and collaborative filtering. These approaches can be self-selecting, for example in forming peer groups to share search results, or through algorithms. However it is clear that effort must be minimized – several of the current generation of Search 2.0 are still require too much manual input. This whole space is just opening out now, and will take many years to evolve. But those who can truly help people get better search results in a world of infinite information, will undoubtedly do extremely well.
Experimenting with a large group blog
By Ross DawsonHaven’t posted here yet on yesterday’s Future of Media Summit, as I am now spending more time over on the Future of Media Summit Participant Blog – go check it out. This is kind of an experiment – we’ve set up a blog that every Summit attendee can write posts on. All attendees received a personal login and password, and were given a participant blogging instructions page. We didn’t get a whole lot of blog posts during the event, partly because of WiFi problems in Sydney, but it is now picking up a little as people join the discussion. There has been a lot of discussion globally on the Future of Media Report (more on this later), which is beginning to be reflected in the blog. In addition, there were 14 “audience panels” at the Sydney event, where participants gathered around their chosen theme. (It’s interesting to see the top themes people chose.) The Drivers of Mobile Content and User Generated Content panels have already posted a summary of their discussions on the blog – hopefully some of the other panels will report back too.
So this is what you could call a Large Group Blog. Around 175 people have logins to the blog – everyone who physically attended the Future of Media Summit in either Sydney or San Francisco. While not many have posted yet, more may do so. I’ll invite a few other people who couldn’t make it to the event, to join in if they choose. Starting points for blog discussions are of course the general theme of the future of media, the Future of Media report, the blog discussion around it, an article on the Summit in the Sydney Morning Herald, other media coverage, with more content to come very soon, including a videostream of the event, a video summary, and more articles. So if you have anything to contribute to the discussion, whether or not you were at the event, just email us at fen [AT] futureexploration [DOT] net and we’ll set you up with a blog login. No idea what will happen with this, but I think it’s time to experiment with blogs with large numbers of people around a particular theme. In the past this has been done on forums and discussion boards. Blogs have usually been for one or a few authors. An event seems like a reasonable starting point to get some interesting people to discuss things of common interest, especially since they’ve met before. It’s also an opportunity for people who have never blogged before to try it out, especially when you have not only the die-hard fanatics in the audience. It seems kind of obvious, but I’m not sure anyone’s done it before quite like this. So whatever happens with the blog, be it small or large, it will be very interesting.
Live videostream for the Future of Media Summit
By Ross DawsonThe live videostream for the Future of Media Summit is now available for pre-registration. Just go to the registration page, then at the time of the event login to the videostream. The live conference videostream is available free to anyone who cares to join us…
Live videostream times (first 3:30 hours from Sydney; last 2 hours from Sydney and San Francisco)
Sydney: 19 July, 8:30am-2pm
San Francisco: 18 July, 3:30-9pm
New York: 18 July, 6:30pm-12
London: 18 July 11:30pm – 19 July 5am
Hope you can join us…