|
I know the thing to do at the end/beginning of a year is to go through the motions
of indicating one's selections for top ten or best something or other. Being a hard
ass cynic has its advantages. It makes the list real short. The column follows: Best TV Show of 1997 -- An Evening With Harry Belafonte (PBS) If PBS doesn't do it, who will? Worst TV Show of 1997 -- Merry Christmas, George Bailey (PBS) PBS shouldn't have done it. In case you missed it, it was a recreation of a 1947 radio program based on the Frank Capra movie. Nothing wrong with that, in fact a lot of it was pretty entertaining, with Nathan Lane as Clarence Oddbody, Martin Landau and Joe Mantegna playing several roles, Sally Field, Nell Carter, Christian Slater as Harry Bailey, Robert Guillaume as Mr. Gower, but to cast Bill Pullman and Penelope Ann Miller in the Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed roles was absolutely the worst single decision ever made by any television executive anywhere, including Fred Silverman. Best Movie -- Men In Black Worst Movie -- Men In Black (sorry, it was a busy year) Best Album -- This Fire , Paula Cole What is it with rock women with incredible voices that they never really make it past the first big album? Shawn Colvin came in a close second, but only because the theme of "Sunny Came Home" was so visceral for me. Jewel has nice tits, but sorry folks, she'll tank with the next album. Anyone remember Hootie? Best Album You Never Heard -- This one was tough, but it has to go to a band I've followed for nearly twenty years now that never quite made the break, a band called Vision, which was big at places like Gildersleeves in the Village. I finally heard the demo master they laid down in 1983 for their first album. Let me know if you want to hear it. It's so good, it practically made me front the money for the final mix. Best Radio Show of 1997 -- *AHEM* I don't like to brag. I'm going to be off in the ozone for this column, so 'scuse me while I kiss the sky. Yea, I know. I write enough esoteric shit to baffle Houdini, and I'm saying I'm not far out enough already? Well, sit down, 'cause this column will blow you away. It all started with an article in the December 29 edition of The New York Times, in the business section, ferchrissake! The article, by Denise Caruso, dealt with captology, a sort of hard-wired acronym for the study of computers as persuasive technology (hence the "capt"). Persuasive technology? Well, think of it this way: everything you do on a computer, more to the point, HOW you do everything you do on a computer, is based on someone else's idea of how to do it. Some software designer or engineer had to sit down and think how most people write an essay or a letter, or put together a business presentation, or create financial reports, and then style the software they were writing to appeal to the largest number of people in that target audience. Last column, I spoke about homogeneity in culture. If this isn't a prime example, I'll eat my hat. We're all typing within the constraints of the same format! Think about this: you go to an ATM. Let's say you need to withdraw $101.57 to cover a coat you want to buy next door. You don't want to take out a penny more or less. If you are lucky, the machine will let you take out $105, but more likely, $110. Therefore, you are forced into their box for their convenience, and overdraw your account, which you scurry to redeposit as soon as you've bought the coat, praying the 43 cents in change doesn't gum up the works. Or, you want to open an Excel file to work on that damned budget analysis your boss insists be done by tomorrow. Sure, you can click on the shortcut or alias to that file, but that opens Excel first, and THEN the spreadsheet. You sit there and wait while Excel loads into memory, including some egregiously wasteful add-ins like, oh, the command to begin to create a chart, and all you wanted to do was to change the number in column F, row 75 to a negative. So maybe you decide you'll batch process, getting together a bunch of files you need to work on so that you amortize the amount of time you've spent waiting across all files you open. But is this how you normally work? In the real world, don't you read one letter at a time? Write on one sheet of paper and then move to the next one? Do a little of this, and a little of that, and then a little more of this? Even for a writer, this is insane! If I have a thought for a column, I find it easier to start writing the damned column on my computer than to jot down stray notes on a Notepad for future pasting together, whereas in the fleshware world, I'd scribble a phrase, and another later, and clip the two together to see how they fit in a paragraph. If I tried to do that on a computer, I'd quickly have thousands of files, each needing an application to open them, and each needing to be discarded not once, but twice (once out of the trash or recycling bin). And then, if I want to tie two thoughts together that are separated by more than a few lines, I have to print the fucking file out anyway to make it work smoothly! So, in another way, I'm shackled in communicating with my readers by the whims of some semi-literate goober in Silicon Valley who probably failed English grammar (which is why he got into hacking code anyway). And mind you, the latest wave of software technology is supposed to be hewing closer to actuality than earlier versions (call it Reality 1.5), where to alter even a minuscule text file, I had to call up the dreaded Ed function in DOS (after typing command.com, etc.). Even the fact that I have to type in my thoughts in order to reach you profoundly affects my presentation. Do I bother including that little bit of research, in order to save myself from another four typos? We are slaves to the medium. What would McLuhan think? And if it was just passive, adjusting to the medium in order to be part of the economic and social evolution, I don't think anyone would have a problem. But our concerns should deepen when we think about how this technology actively campaigns to foster adjusted behavior. Tamagotchi, anyone? I'd be curious to know how many have been confiscated by teachers and parents in order to allow children to concentrate on their school/homework? The article cites something even more sinister. Apparently, Hewlett Packard has some screen saver it gives away free with its color printers, and that screen saver software encourages you, when you are printing multiple color copies, to print these multiple copies on your printer, rather than make the economical (and hence, rational) decision to print one copy and make additional copies more cheaply at a color copier. Why? Ultimately, it sells more printer ink which is more expensive than toner. And then of course, there's seductive computing. B.J. Fogg of Stanford University (byway of Sun Microsystems) has coined this phrase to cover everything from Web banner ads to video game attract mode screens. Is anyone convinced this will remain a benign technology? Benign technology is rare on the Web. For example, porn sites lure you in with the promise of free pictures, and then launch fifteen or twenty browser windows from your software, with click through ads, and links to other sites, because they make money with how many times a particular ad is seen or clicked on. How hard a leap of faith is it to go from ads that invite you to visit a web site to ads that encourage you to ads that practically draw you in? Suppose while browsing a web site, a screen pops up with a friend's name, asking you to meet him or her at web site Y (I'd have used "X" . but you know...). You get there, and suddenly you're in an advertisement? How profoundly is your behavior going to be changed? Next time that person emails you, are you going to be so quick to read it? And how reluctant will you be to surf the Net, knowing that someone has compiled a list of the people you speak to regularly? And do you doubt they already have this now? When Microsoft announced that it was going to "allow" (read: force) Windows 95 users to register their products over a modem line, on the proviso that MS would be able to search their hard drives for other products in the MS line, most people correctly raised objections on privacy (or piracy) grounds. More insidious than this, MS was going to use this information as a bulwark against competitors products gaining a foothold in their markets, because it would allow them to register the percentage of users who had, say, Netscape, and also to get a picture of the amount of usage these products got by viewing the Windows Registry files. (Indirectly. It would have been a resource available kind of snapshot, but you get the idea) Presumably, MS would nip in the bud any upstart that quietly got under their radar with a superior product (like Navigator) and allow them to offer a competing product better tailored to Windows. Thus forcing our behavior to hew to the Microsoft standard. No matter how benign, standards discourage creative thinking. And Microsoft has proven itself to be less than benign. I'm guessing the demise of Microsoft as a quasi-monopolistic power is just around the corner, if for no other reason than history shows us that when any monomaniacal entity (nation, state, sovereign, or corporation) has to aggressively defend its own turf, decay has pervaded internally and externally, and that organization cannot long survive. OK, so it's now time to bring this argument to the main thrust: if it can happen in technology, if it has begun to happen in business, then it has already happened in culture. Business, for all its fruffery of being on the bleeding edge of new ideas and new ways of utilizing resources, is behind the times in many ways when adopting new humanistic influences. It took the children of Dr. Spock to inculcate the "family friendly workplace". The Westernization (really, the Americanization) of global culture is due less to the popularity of our cultural influences than our ability to impose those influences worldwide. The ubiquity of such outlets as CNN, MTV, the Internet itself, rock and roll music, McDonald's, cigarettes, and so on is the result of a deliberate "push" effort thana pull, which is very different than mercantile transactions of past centuries. In the past, if you wanted Chinese silk, or African spices, or American tobacco, you sent out a large ship to gather in bulk these items, enough to cover the cost of the voyage. This meant that you had to batch your orders in forms that made the most economic sense (you wouldn't get China silk and American tobacco, but you might get African spices and American tobacco in one trip, and save the China silk and Darjeeling tea for another). Demand was not anticipatory, because there was no advertising, little hype. You knew someone who used the product, and you wanted it because you had tried it out or heard good things about it. You controlled those goods and services you desired. You exerted the right to say no. That's a far more difficult exercise in a culture where your desires for particular goods and services have been subsumed to the desire to simply want more. That desire for more is fed by advertising, which presents so many choices for so many things in so many places that it's impossible to go through a month without using some of your discretionary income to buy for the sake of buying. Product placements in movies, billboards at sporting events, blimps, posters, Web banners, designer logos, each ad distracting you from as many others ads as possible, and those ads in turn have to become more strident and pushy to gain your attention. Attention, not information, is the market capitalization for the 21st century. If they can get your attention, they can get your money. Has there been a more shameless pandering for product placements than the current 007 movie? This could be the start of a new way of gauging the profitability of films: not by how many eyes see them, but how many deals they can sign with advertisers. Randall Rothenberg, in Wired Magazine 6.01, makes the point that advertising revenues have been mostly based on smoke-and-mirrors, "make the evidence fit the conclusions" marketing. No one can show a direct link between any particular ad on any particular show or in any particular medium bringing in more sales for any particular company with any consistency. Yes, we all remember ads, and clearly commercials influence our decision making process, but there is no way to tie this together to prove it conclusively. In fact, it's been shown that most people view advertised goods as fungible, with brand awareness the main criterion for purchase decisions. So it's not so far fetched to think that the same techniques and impetuses that allowed agencies to master creative pitching based on results about as concrete as pea soup will now pervade our movie going experience. Which brings up a disturbing point (you should know me better...eventually I connect the dots for you): at home, I can change the channel (as the first ex-Mrs. Salonen will eagerly confirm) when a commercial comes on. I don't have to click on the banner ad. I can turn the page to avoid reading a newspaper ad. I can't when the commercial becomes an integral part of my interaction with the entertainment. Persuasive technology is sadistic. And the creativity of the film is diminished by this. Bond drinks a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, and so you imagine what kind of vodka. But now, you know it's Smirnoff ! Beer? Heineken . And how does 007 pay for all this? Why, not through some mystical license to buy issued by Her Royal Majesty, but with a Visa debit card <lift card to screen, dazzling smile>. In the early days of television, this was really a problem, and the networks agreed to stop doing it. Often, you'd see the star of the show (the movie "Quiz Show" has some wonderful examples of this stuff) simply turn to the camera and drop in a plug, sometimes clearly identified as an ad, sometimes not. When it became clear that this disturbed certain oversight people-- lawmakers, judges, and such-- the practice quickly stopped. But what is old is new once again, and speaks to the power of this technology, this use of persuasive science. Only this time, you pay for the privilege. Makes you wonder how they'll get around these placements when the time comes for the film to appear on TV. Even the fact that someone could make movies about the Power Rangers or the Spice Girls speaks to this whole "seductive technology" meme: buy more of our stuff, and you'll get to see more of us. In fact, the Spice Girls are quite possibly the most successful item to be persuasively marketed, since I believe it is no coincidence that nude photos of each of them has popped up in Usenet groups shortly after the first single was released here. The Nielsen ratings are about this, as well: measure the audience response to the choices confronting them, and subvert the creative process as media outlets strive to present more of the same stuff that's been so successful, in order to generate bigger shares and higher ad revenues. Find that one best formula to generate audience and dollars. Any wonder why "Seinfeld" sucked for so many years? But, wait! There's more! If you make the leap of thought, captology deals with the interactive interface, the intersections of your world with the computer's world. In the cultural examples I've listed, the persuasive technology is one that is shoved down your throat, and not one you have to adhere to in order to accomplish some other goal. It's not behavior fostered by the interaction with a tool, where the tail wags the dog, but someone's heavy handed exploitation of your attention. Now, what happens when the cultural persuasives meet the technological? Bill Gates has stated his desire to expand the market for his Windows products to include dumb appliances that can be smartened up with scaled down versions of his software. So let's see...will you be able to make Grandma's special apple pie without the hackers coming around to inspect the ingredients? In many ways, we already have the captologies in place for our day to day labor saving devices. Telephone numbers have to fall within certain (expanding) parameters. Scissors, for ergonomy sake, are either right handed or left handed. Keyboards, computer and typewriter, come in either QWERTY or Dvorak. This all grew out of the turn of the century time and motion studies conducted by various social evolutionists (I'm tempted to say Frederick Taylor, but I get the feeling that is incorrect) who believed there is "one right way" to do a job by measuring the chronologic efficiencies various techniques gained. Ford applied it to the assembly line, Smith Corona to keyboards, Bell Telephone to dialing, and the rest is history. Likewise, television and radio applied such seminal persuasive technologies as station call letters (traditionally, east started with "W", west with "K", and the dividing line was the Mississippi River) and air checks, and dial placement (the lower the number, the more likely a listener was to tune into it, because you had to turn a dial to change channels). Surprisingly, no one thought to cut a deal with radio or TV manufacturers to have their frequency or channel the default setting, although I'm sure it was considered and rejected as too difficult, given that channel 2 in NYC is one network, while in Boston it's a different one. But the more interactive a technology becomes, the more it will be prone to persuasive applications. For instance, how far down the road from the smart toaster is it to envision a toaster that can spit out a coupon for a brand of bread? Especially when that toaster is hooked up to the Internet (another plausible scenario. There are already photocopiers that can dial into the home office when they so much as jam up with paper, electronically describe their problem, and request a technician)? We can expect to see this technology trickle down from the most complex tools we use, such as cars, to the "dumbest" such as can openers. Remember, the more interaction our toys require, the more it will be prone to persuasive uses. Apply that to a gaming system, and all of a sudden, that networked game of Doom you were going to hook into becomes a window into your television viewing habits. That may be even more personal than a glimpse into your computer habits. Apply that to a can opener, and it will dial into a nexus interface that will upload the fact you use it twice a day to infer that you have a dog or a cat, and will receive instructions to not only adjust its lubricant levels to comply, but to encourage you to purchase a brand of food that is "opener friendly" (more brittle metal, I suppose). Where this really all gets frightening is that last year, scientists discovered a way to connect together four semiconductors into a mini-neural network that was able to develop simple thought processes, with the implied application that it could be used to bridge synapses in the brain to improve damaged areas or enhance intelligence once centers of particular types of brain function are identified. Nanorobots have been tested in labs that could conceivably infuse the bloodstream to repair organs, and with the announcement in December that it might be possible to instantly exchange information (at least at the sub-atomic level) across interstellar or even galactic distances, and you can see where some of the implications can get tricky, to say the least. And then there's this whole discipline that is working on bio-computers that will operate on the body's electrical current at the molecular level, thus using the entire body as a giant operating system. If persuasive technology in the flesh continuum means that software designers deliberately dumb down their products in order to appeal to the barest minimum of creativity in order to sell the most copies, then what will it mean when these same software designers are designing bionic eyes? Will we ever be able to see art again? CARL SALONEN, de_Valois@compuserve.com, is a budding chaotician who is currently undergoing rehab for his sex addiction at the Dirk Diggler Center. Visit his homepage, if you dare. 
|