The feeling that people have, which makes them think that everything was once under control, but that they are now faced with an unmanageable and mushrooming amount of new information, could be seen as an example of innumeracy.  Innumeracy is a concept and term that describes “a person’s inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives”. Innumeracy is most often used to describe mistakes in perception and understanding due to mathematical illeteracy.  According to Sharky, even when the number of spam e-mails a person gets increases by only around 25%, they will perceive this increase as more than a doubling of spam emails.

Another example of information overload and faulty filtering leading to false perceptions about culture and society, is the way that many people believe that the modern world is a much more violent and uncivilized place than it used to be.  This is brought about by the fact that the news stories that lead the evening TV news broadcasts and that pop up on the front page of your browser when you turn your computer on are the most ghastly, sensational, frightening stories about murders and kidnappings and shootings and depravity.  I guess we should all just be embarrassed that we are so voyeuristic and curious to know about the horrors that others go through.  The reality is that stories like: “Girl Scout makes doing good deeds a lifelong pursuit” are not going to sell a ton of pop-up ads online. (i.e. Bad news sells).

Scientist Reijo Savolainer of the University of Tampere in Finland did a study on how people deal with Information Overload.  According to Savolainer, there can be both real and perceived information overload, and people deal with this in one of two ways: by filtering and/or withdrawing.  The filtering –as he describes it – involves directly weeding out useless information once it is received, and the withdrawing involves protecting ones self from useless information in the first place, by limiting the number of information sources one receives.  I think this backs up what Sharky was talking about.  He seems to be telling us to get over ourselves and just get used to “information overload”, since it is – as he puts it – “the water we swim in”.  Since we will never be able to keep up with the information, we need to get better at “handling” it.  And we shouldn’t let it stress us out.

Zittrain cites three main examples of this surprising, yet encouraging, phenomenon: the Internet itself, Wikipedia and the Craig’s List Ride Share Board.  The basic idea behind all of these, starting with the Internet, is that people with information, expertise, goods and services, or personal opinions to share will spend a lot of time and effort to share it, at all costs, even and especially when they are not getting paid for their efforts.  A second concept that Zittrain talks about is how people are basically trusting of others and they do like to have faith in the good intentions of people they don’t even know.

Why do people do this?  I typed into Google: “the psychology of knowledge sharing on the web“, and I got 272,000 results. People are wondering about this. There are papers being written about it psychology courses being taught at institutes of higher learning, and presentations, like Zittrain’s, at  Internet and media related conferences.

Without going deeply into the nature of human psychology, there are a couple of basic reasons why people like to share information, namely ego and altruism.  People are curious by nature and tend to like solving puzzles and challenges; when they solve something tricky in a cool way, they like to let people know that they did it and how they did it.  What better way to let people know about something awesome and clever you did than by posting it on the Web, where ANYONE in the world with Internet access can look at it, study it, copy it, and comment on it ad infinitum?  It’s got to be an ego boost when you can google yourself and find tons of sites where your brilliant ideas are being referenced and commented on.

And then there are people on the receiving end of the information who are not contributors, and they are spending a lot of time online, taking real advantage of the information that other people are providing.   The users accessing this information are getting a lot out of the Internet and they are trusting in the honesty and integrity of the providers of the information that they are downloading, using and sharing.

I recently installed digital video editing software on my home computer, and as a relatively new user, I often have “urgent” questions that come up at odd times, when I don’t want to bug my friends or professors.  So I turn to Google, and just type in “how do I blah blah blah with FCP7?” and I always get tons of results, with thorough explanations and screen shots and back and forth conversations, often at a website called “CreativeCOW.net” which started in April of 2001 as an offshoot of the “Media 100 Worldwide Users Group” in 1994 in the San Francisco Bay area.  This website has sponsors and staff and that sort of thing, so I’m guessing (although I don’t quite know how this works) that many of their contributors have figured out how to make money for putting in their time and effort. Creative Cow can’t be paying every contributor though, and there are many other sites on the Web where software users are just sharing information for fun(?) or whatever reason.  I don’t get it, but I am always grateful.

As far as altruism goes, people like to be generous and share with others.  I have read that Americans are the most generous people in the world, and the fact that they are using the Web as an outlet for this is not surprising.  There are websites like “Random Acts of Kindness” which help online users connect with other people over the Internet to share thoughtful messages and, as they put it, “to make the internet a better place”.  The opportunities for connecting and for charity on the Web are endless.  You can go to “Cell Phones For Soldiers” and help the troops by donating your cell phone. And you can even find out how to donate clothes to tsunami victims.  These are just a few of the examples of charity on the web and they are the kinds of things that people used to do (and still do) through their church groups and community organizations. Now – especially when people are not joining organized religion as much as they used to – they can stay connected and help their fellow humans from the comfort of their own homes, with a click of a mouse.

People are also sharing knowledge about current events and major news stories, despite limits that their government might be putting on free speech.  An example of this is the recent elections in Iran when the government there may have tried to shut down the use of Twitter to report protests there. Online readers are eager to hear about what’s really going on. People are connecting all over the world.

There may be hope for people yet!

This is me, compartmentalized:

Sara Billingsley:

1) Personal Me – Private civilian

2) Radio Enthusiast Me/Student Me – Public person – my “brand” of me

3) Professional Radio Me – radio station representative.  This me will be public for you, on your behalf, for a fee.

Personal Me = me.  A civilian.  A person.  I have a family and friends and personal and political opinions, musical likes and dislikes, a sense of humor, cultural interests.  I have a physical home address.  I like to keep this stuff to myself, or, at least only share it within a limited number of self-selected people.

Radio Enthusiast Me/Student Me = me again.  Student. Professional person. Radio enthusiast and wannabe radio media worker.  You do not need to know about my family or friends.  I may share my humor and certain cultural interests with you (i.e., music, art). My political opinion will – I hope – not be known to you. Anyone is welcome to be my internet friend or online acquaintance.

Professional Radio Me = why, it’s me, yet again!  Program Director (and deejay) for the New England Institute of Art’s “All Independent Radio” (AIR) internet-only radio station.  I represent the radio station and its online presence and will communicate about radio business on its behalf.

As a demonstration of the strategy I have for my Online Presence, I will map out how each one of me is currently using the “new media” and what we may intend to do in the future:

Personal Me [PRIVATE]

email (2): one for family and close friends, the other for business, junkmail, online shopping and other stuff;  I don’t mind posting the second email publicly.

Facebook: no photos of me (avator only) or my family; minimal personal info. For staying in touch with family and old friends. Don’t post much.

Radio Enthusiast Me [PUBLIC]

email: radioobsession@gmail.com [radio,radio show,music stuff]

blog: http://radioobsession.wordpress.com [show playlists,radio,music stuff]

web: http://www.radioobsession.net [under construction. For audio & video content and other radio/music stuff]

twitter: @radioobsession [show tweets]

Facebook: [Not yet, but maybe. For radio show.]

Student Me [SEMI-PUBLIC]

email: school email from the New England Institute of Art, where I am a student

blog: you are reading this article on my student blog.  It was assigned for an Internet Technologies class I am taking with Sean Fitzroy

web: http://sb4159.aisites.com/ free school website; don’t use much

twitter: @ssbillingsley – for CSI110 class, but will transfer to Professional Radio Me

Professional Radio Me [PUBLIC]

email: using school email to communicate with AIR radio staff; will be starting an email account for the AIR station

blog: AIR blog pending

web: AIR http://www.NEIALive.com – needs serious updating! I manage radio show schedule. You can link to radio stream here.

twitter: AIR @neiaDJ [radio station/show tweets]

Facebook: AIR’s All Independent Radio for station activity (semi-inactive; will re-vitalize)

Future Me

web: http://www.sarabillingsley.net [domain name reserved for future use by Professional Me? Personal Me?]

So how was my online presence strategy tested? Well, Personal Me’s Facebook became a fan and posted a comment on the radio show Facebook wall of one of Radio Enthusiast Me’s AIR colleagues.  I was crossing the line. I felt edgy – like something dangerous was happening.  Several hours later, one of Personal Me’s old friends on Facebook clicked a couple of links, made some mental connections, and then commented on Personal Me’s Facebook wall about Radio Enthusiast Me’s radio show.  The line between the two Me’s is blurred.  I hope nobody else noticed.

In the world of Technology, there is a battle raging between the consumers of media and the companies who provide it (or the means of accessing it) over rights of use and ownership. The inclination of developers of software and other media products is to control when and how their creations are used, so that in theory, these companies will enjoy maximum financial benefit from having lone control over them.  In June of 2004, Cory Doctorow spoke to the Microsoft Research group about the down side of Digital Rights Management (DRM).  Doctorow explained how DRM, as he sees it, is bad for consumers, bad for artists and bad for business and innovation.

When a person buys software, or a song on iTunes, what are they buying?  The song or the right to hear the song? Do they own the software they bought or just a license to use it?    The concept of sales and ownership goes back through the centuries and there is an element of fairness expected in a transaction between a buyer and a seller.  Imagine that you bought a sheep from a farmer whose flock was known for its excellent meat and wool production; the farmer received his money for the sheep you bought, and that would be the end of his involvement with the transaction.  He would have no right to complain or take back the sheep, if you decided not to use the meat or wool but instead decided to ride the sheep or clone it several times or use it as a decorative, living lawn mower or even sell it to someone else.  You can move the sheep to a new barn as many times as you want and still have full ownership rights and access to it.  You bought it and it is yours to use as you see fit, as long as you are not breaking any laws.

If you apply the sheep model to software, you might end up with a situation like that of Timothy Vernor, an eBay distributor, who just this month won a U.S. District Court Case giving him the right to sell a used copy of software by Autodesk that he had himself purchased.  Autodesk’s claim was that the original purchaser had bought a license to use the software, but that “license to use” did not equal ownership or a right to sell the software.  The judge’s decision is supported by the “first-sale doctrine“ which “allows the purchaser to transfer (i.e., sell or give away) a particular lawfully made copy of the copyrighted work without permission once it has been obtained”.  This doctrine was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1908 and codified into law in 1976.

In another recent eBay case, which as far as I know has not gone to court, an eBayer named George Hotelling experimented with selling an mp3 file of a song that he had purchased from iTunes.  He insisted that he was going to delete the file from his own computer(s) after the sale so that the transfer of the song would be complete.  His eBay listing was removed and he was told that he was in violation of eBay’s Downloadable Media Policy. This is a modern problem, unique to the media.  eBay does not forbid the sale of used music CDs or LPs; is it only because the owner has a physical item and not a digital file made up of pure electricity and nothing else?  We are dealing with conflicting ideas of ownership just based on delivery methods.

A very famous challenge to the first-sale doctrine was the case of Sony Corp of America v. Universal Studios (i.e., the Betamax case of 1984). Sony wanted to develop the Betamax as a home video recording device, but Universal saw this technology that was able to make copies and/or recordings of copyrighted material as a copyright infringement.  Fortunately for us all, Sony won the case, and since then, manufacturers of VCRs and other subsequent media file managers (e.g., cd burners, iPods, TiVo) can develop and sell their devices without having to worry about being charged with copyright infringement.  We all benefit when innovators are allowed to create new technologies and devices that can talk to each other and that allow us to use, view, listen to and duplicate the media files that we are using, now that we are getting into a time when people are buying digital copies of books, music and movies, instead of physical ones. Cory Doctorow is very much in favor of this openness and sees a great “market opportunity for truly capable devices“.

The ACLU exists to help protect U.S. citizens against infringements on their civil rights as protected by the U.S. Constitution and BIll of Rights. There is a similar organization out there fighting for and protecting the public interest with respect to digital rights.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was founded in 1990 and works on an often pro bono basis, taking on court cases that challenge issues of “free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights” as they relate to the new technologies.  The EFF also works to challenge “bad” legislation and to educate policymakers and the public about these important issues.  As innovators attempt to design and control our use of media for their own monetary benefit, getting more and more linked into tracking our personal habits and information, it is comforting to know that a group like the EFF is out there working to make sure that groups like Google, with its Google Book Search will not be allowed to abuse its power, and that the rights of the buyer to own and use media files that they purchase might be protected.

If advertisers are not reaching their audiences by the traditional means of television, radio and newspaper advertising, how are they getting the word out about their products?  We will look at how the “Long Tail” paradigm works as far as movies are concerned.

If you type the phrase “movie reviews” into the Google search engine, you will get over 155 million results!  In the early days of the film industry, you probably had to be in a theatre, watching a movie – and the trailers before the feature – in order to find out what the upcoming releases were going to be.  After that, the movie industry would do some sort of promotions and rely on word of mouth to promote the newest stars and feature films.  As Chris Anderson describes in his article, The Long Tail,  the audience did not really have a choice in what they saw – they would see whatever the studios provided, and the studios would produce the movies that they felt were going to be “hits”.  Moviegoers were a captive audience who accepted what they were given, and were content with that.

Jumping ahead one hundred years, we have arrived at a situation where more and more people are staying at home, buying jumbo, high definition, flat screen TV’s with surround sound and watching what they like, when they like, in the comfort of their own homes with whomever they choose.  But when so much is available, how do people choose what they want to watch?

Just as people don’t have to go to their local video store, with its limited selection, to get access to things they want to watch, they also don’t have to rely solely on the opinion of their local movie reviewer or arts critic who writes for their city newspaper.  They may not typically agree with this critic’s opinions, or like to read their critiques, and they don’t have to.  If they like to read reviews before making a movie choice, there are websites like MetaCritic.com which compile and present movie reviews and ratings by critics from all over the country.  If there is a critic whose opinion you like, you can see what they have to say, and see what other critics have to say as well.  This is the “collaborative filtering” that Chris Anderson talked about as it exists in the “Long Tail” paradigm.  MetaCritic.com is a collection of opinions by professional movie critics, but there are many other websites which compile viewer opinions, ratings and reviews and make them available to other like minded viewers.  Kids-In-Mind.com was started in 1992 as a response to the lack of honest information for parents to use  to better understand the meaning of movie ratings for children.  The members provide detailed information about levels of sexual and violent content of movies rated for children.  This has become “the largest database of parents’ reviews anywhere” on line.

As important as anything else these days in promoting movies (and many other forms of media) is the phenomenon of “online buzz”.  If a movie production company is smart and lucky, they will have a trailer or related item on the internet that will take off like wild fire and really help to promote their product; a good example would be the recently released film “the Hangover” where the trailer for the movie on YouTube had almost  a million hits and the Trailer for “Bruno” had well over 2 million views.  That kind of publicity, although extremely low cost to the movie producers, is priceless.

In an online article, Attorney Jeff Cohen writes about how movies make money.  He describes the ways in which films are distributed, namely, “theatrical release, nontheatrical release, DVD and videocassette, Internet, video on demand, pay television, and free television. In addition, income is often generated from merchandise related to the movie and the release of a soundtrack CD.” In years past, the most important money-making element of that distribution schedule was the theatrical release. Nowadays, movies are often released straight to DVD, and all of the other steps in the distribution path will also be important parts of the continuing revenue stream for each release.  The bump from the initial weekend box office sales is nice, but not as critical as it once was.

Since there is so much media out there and available to anyone at any given time, people are using their resources and what they know about the experiences of others to make educated choices about how to spend their leisure time when it comes to movie watching. As Chris Anderson says, “popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability”. People can decide if they are interested in the “hit” movie that the Hollywood studio is promoting as this season’s blockbuster, or if they’d rather watch the latest independent movie from the Sundance Film Festival. And the companies who are providing the media files are just as happy to sell or rent either of the two movies to the buyer.

In the article “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution” , Tim O’Reilly makes a convincing argument that piracy and unauthorized file-sharing  represent an unavoidable step in the path towards new and evolving methods for generating revenue from the distribution of books, movies and music over the Internet.  As peer-to-peer file sharing has grown and as writers and musicians have learned how to sell their own work on their own websites using online payment services like PayPal, there is a fear that the film, music and book publishing industries are not going to survive.  Artists are pushing back against the limitations placed on them by the old industry structures, and consumers are benefiting from the possibilities of these direct buyer-to-seller interactions

A similar phenomenon is going on in the world of radio. In the 1990s, the FCC relaxed regulations on station ownership rules, making it possible for large corporations to own multiple stations in a single market, leading ultimately to overly controlled, generic, uninteresting programming.

Traditional terrestrial broadcast radio still serves as an efficient way for local advertisers to reach a local audience and sell their products.  However, as more and more people use their iPods to access music (which can be shuffled and played back randomly, with no advertisements), talk radio and sports radio are becoming more popular and more profitable, and commercial music radio has become less important as a means for listeners to find out about new music released by anyone except for the biggest of celebrities.

Because many younger people do not spend time listening to terrestrial broadcast radio, but instead choose to listen to music on their own terms and on their own time, many radio stations are now complementing their on-air programming with live internet streaming and podcasts of their programs, in an attempt to maximize their listening audiences. A good example of this is PRI’s “This American Life” , where listeners have the option of streaming episodes at no charge for one week after the original air date or buying a podcast download on iTunes.

People are saying that traditional terrestrial radio is dead or dying.  If that’s the case, how will people find out about new artists?  Must they rely on recommendations by music providers like amazon.com music, which lists the most popular “albums” sold and makes suggestions based on a user’s prior purchases and downloads?

Knowing that they aren’t reaching listeners the way they used to, radio broadcasters are branching out into new kinds of delivery systems such as satellite radio and iTunes, in an attempt to meet the people where they live.  Some colleges and universities, like the New England Institute of Art, are creating new radio programming that is not broadcast over the airwaves to a limited physical area around the school but instead is being “webcast to the world” via Internet Radio providers like Backbone Networks.  And as of February of 2009, Backbone has made available a free College Radio Tuner which allows listeners to access Backbone stations on their iPhones and iPod Touches.  If a radio station that uses the Backbone Internet Radio service to webcast stores it’s music catalogue in iTunes, listeners will be able to link – in real time – into songs that they are listening to and buy them from the iTunes store.  This is a brand new way for radio to promote new music sales and generate revenue for the radio station.

Just as in the way that the advent of television in the 1940s didn’t kill radio but rather forced it to change and adapt it’s programming – leading it to become even stronger as a result during the ensuing decades, the advent of portable devices, self-selected iPod playlists, and peer recommendations is not killing radio now, it is just forcing it to evolve and adapt to stay relevant and listened to.