Week 2: "C-30, C-60, C-90 GO!" An extended digression on media technologies before and during the Internet age

There is an unfortunate tendency to see “social media” as a monumental departure from historical trends in media. In reality, social media – and the Internet in general – are a mere step-change in the gradual democratization in media that has been in progress for about two centuries, as the technology has become progressively more accessible and affordable to more people. Media production has been revolutionized by two parallel trends: Reproduction technology that is more affordable and easier to use, combined with progressively less-costly media access. As a result of the increasing affordability of media technology, no social media platform is inherently better or worse for business, unless the platform manager imposes policies that discourage use by individuals. I will explain this more, after this extended digression.

Do you remember the “mimeograph” machine and the spirit duplicator, i.e., "ditto machine"? When I was in elementary school and dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the sound of the spirit duplicating machine, along with the distinctive smell of the fluids it used, regularly greeted me when I entered school. Teachers would type their lessons and tests to create a “stencil,” and then the stencil would be used to print as many copies on sheets of paper as desired, at least until the stencil wore out. Spirit duplicating yielded paper with distinctive purple letters, while mimeograph created black letters that were more popular in business.

"On the Poverty of Student Life" (“De La Misere en Milieu Etudiant”) was originally published in French, by students protesting government and institutional control over higher education in France in 1966. This short book was the kind of material for which offset printing was most suitable.

Little did I know that in universities around the world, student activists were using the same technology – sometimes quietly purloined from their schools without authorization – to print materials that challenged the government, military, corporations, and even the university system. Therefore, even in the 1960s, pre-computer technology was giving individuals and small poorly-financed groups the ability to produce printed materials to challenge the most powerful entities in society.

The mimeograph, the spirit duplicator, and the offset press all produced printed paper in small quantities at much lower overall cost than the kind of massive printing plants used to print daily newspapers and best-selling books. At the same time, the cost of paper fell dramatically after the technology to create paper from tree pulp instead of discarded cloth, was invented in the 19^th century. As a result, as early as 1887, when Thomas Edison patented the first mimeograph, the social impact of making printing technology available to more people at a cost they could afford was becoming apparent.

By the late 1970s, coin-operated plain-paper photocopiers were available in “copy shops” near universities and in public libraries, but soon also found in drug stores in big cities and small towns alike. Would-be publishers quickly used these democratized photocopiers to reproduce hand-designed “zines”, “underground comics,” and other new publications, usually focused on politics and/or music, that often vanished as quickly as they appeared. Their existence, however, demonstrates two crucial principles of media technology: 1) When a media technology is too expensive for most individuals, but otherwise suitable for small-scale use, someone will start a business by making it available to individuals, and 2) once that media technology is available commercially, individuals will rush to use it to help spread messages they want to disseminate.

Other media have been democratized in much the same way. For example, after the 35 mm film camera and projector became popular for making and showing commercial films, 16 mm, and then 8 mm cameras and projectors were developed to allow small organizations and individuals to shoot, edit, and project their films. Although 8 mm film cameras never became popular for “serious” films, due to technical limitations, for many events – including the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 – 8 mm film, shot by a hobbyist, is the only visual record in existence.

In the 1980s, the development of home videotape recorders and 32-bit personal computers combined to create a new media revolution, by allowing hobbyists to shoot onto VHS videocassettes, digitize them for the computer, and then edit them into videos suitable for distribution on cassette. The original South Park animated series was first distributed on VHS videocassettes by a Fox network executive – who paid Matt Stone and Trey Parker $2000 to make it – as a 1995 Christmas gift.

While magnetic tape recorders, that appeared shortly after World War II, were the first affordable method for individuals to record sound, they were not commonly used as a mass media because duplicating them was time-consuming and costly. This changed in the 1980s, when the dual cassette player/recorder became increasingly more affordable. Many a rock band started its recording career through home recording and duplicating. The British band “Bow Wow Wow” even released a popular record – on cassette tape – joyously reminding listeners that they could record their favorite songs when they were broadcast over the radio, and play them on their portable tape player (e.g., the Sony “Walkman”), rather than buying records from stores.

It used to break my heart when I went in your shop

And you said my records were out of stock 

So I don't buy records in your shop 

Now I tape them all 'cause I'm 'Top of The Pops' 

Yeah, now I got a new way to move 

It's shiny and black and don't need a groove 

Now I don't need no album rack 

I carry my collection over my back 

C-30 C-60 C-90 Go! 

Off the radio, I get a constant flow 

Hit it, pause it, record it and play 

Turn it, rewind and rub it away 

- “C-30 C-60 C-90 Go!” by Bow Wow Wow (1980)

                  

Due to the inherent potential of radio and television broadcasts to interfere with each other, government agencies have prevented people from using either technology to broadcast programs without a license. However, “Community Radio” stations that feature community-produced content have proliferated across the U.S. since the 1950s. The introduction of cable television in the 1970s opened the door to “Community Access Television” in which the content is produced by community members; the result has spawned countless parodies, especially on comedy programs like Saturday Night Live.

“Wayne's World,” first shown on NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1989, was originally presented as a zero-budget show broadcast on a small city community cable system.

Therefore, print, film, radio, and television have all been steadily democratized, so that thousands and millions of people have been able to use them to spread their messages, and those thousands and millions of people have used those opportunities.

Enter the Internet, first made available to the general public in the 1980s, and then universalized as the “Worldwide Web” (www) in 1994. The key difference between Internet-distributed content and most earlier technologies are that – except in the case of paid Internet advertising and “spam” e-mail – it is almost impossible to get a message over the Internet to a user that did not request it. Older media, such as print, could be distributed by such means as posting a poster on a bulletin board or stapling it to a telephone poll. The Web allows an infinite number of messages to be sent, but only to people that direct their browser to the page on which it is published. This rule even applies to Facebook pages, YouTube channels and Twitter feeds.

Due to this feature of “selectivity,” the “Liking” and “Sharing” of media is integral to distributing any message. At the same time, as Dave Kerpen points out, viewers tend to be much more influenced by messages that their “friends” – who they may or may not have ever met in-person – endorse and disseminate.

The upshot of all this is that popularity and activity on a social media platform determine whether it is useful for any type of social media, personal or business. A platform with relatively few users and little activity will not be good for any kind of social media. On the other hand, a platform with devoted users, even if relatively few in number, may be the best way to reach a particular type of customer/user. “MySpace” (music) and “FetLife” (alternative sexuality) are two sites with relatively few users that are difficult to reach in other ways.

Print, radio, television, and even film have all be used in successful marketing campaigns by large companies. The Internet, and especially social media, allows that communication to be two-way, because individuals can use them also. Consequently, if a social media platform has enough of the kind of active users that a business wants to reach, it is a good platform for business.

Try to name a platform that is not good for marketing. Twitter is actively used by millions of businesses, large or small, with social media experts monitoring the site for hashtags and other example of their company and industry being mentioned. Facebook works well when a company has a strong customer base who are on the platform; users interested enough in a business to “Like” its Facebook page will probably be interested in new products, promotions, and locations.

YouTube is another useful site for marketing, although people rarely try to communicate directly with a company by posting a comment on a video. However, anyone interested enough in the YouTube channel of a company to “Subscribe” to it will be interested in learning about new products, promotions and locations. The only real issue is that the cost of producing an engaging video message is generally more costly and requires more skills than creating a text message, possibly with an accompanying photo, suitable for Twitter or Facebook.

Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Whatsapp are all devoted to sharing photos and short video clips; the primary different is that the latter two are intended to create more immediacy (and perhaps a false sense of security for the users), by automatically-deleting messages after a preset period. Instagram and Pinterest, on the other hand, preserve messages until the user removes them.

All major social media platforms allow a company to disseminate messages, and except for paid advertising, the messages are likely to reach someone excited about the company. Even in the case of paid Internet advertising, companies like Google have a strong incentive to send paid messages to people likely to “click” on the display ad or search engine link, rather than blindly post them on pages.

Dave Kerpen, in the introduction to his book Likeable Social Media, relates his experience of the competitor of a company that he had just complained trying to reach him on Twitter to send him a comforting, but not “hard-sell” type message, in order to illustrate the difference between marketing by simply sending messages to people that have already “liked” a company, as opposed to reaching out to people with whom a company has no pre-existing relationship. Social media is so “personal” that a potential customer is likely to resent being sent a direct “mention” or worse, “Direct Message”, when it is unwanted. Unwanted direct messages are like “junk mail” in the physical world; only marginally effective, and often counter-productive.

Week 2: Blogs on which I commented

I commented on the blogs of these students:

Raynor, Hailey
Slade, Janda

Vigil, Janae

Much of my comments were about the font-size. I had to set the browser zoom-in to each blog from 110% to 150% to be able to read all elements, including comments, comfortably. As I noted, readability should always be considered when publishing anything. I went back to my blog to double-check the font-size, and I find it easy to read at a normal 100% or even 90% zoom-out. Let me know if you have readability issues with my blog, thanks!

Week 1: New Theme

I chose a theme called "Picture Window" to update the old theme I have used for this blog since 2012, which was "Watermark." The version of Watermark that I used was brown, with flying birds, because I wanted to write a lot about environmental issues. For the new theme, I chose a version of "Picture Window" that also uses brown as an accent color. I also used dark text on a white background, because that is easiest to read,

This blog is a continuation of the blog I started in 2012, called "National Progressive Review," and stopped writing in 2013. I decided to kept the old URL, nationalprogressive.blogspot.com, because I don't want to run the risk of loosing it. Also, there are a few pages on the Net that have links to my blog, and I don't want to break those links.

The old articles are now unavailable because I set them all to "Draft." This was done to comply with the class assignment requirement that the blog only be used for class assignments.