Archive for October, 2007
Part I: What is the Ignorance Economy?
October 24, 2007 | (1) Comment
“Utube.com is making a mistake in suing YouTube.com for the misdirected traffic (Web site visitors) it gets. Doesn’t Utube realize the grand gift it has been given? Many sites would kill for that much traffic — even accidental traffic… Drop the suit, Utube. Revel in people’s ignorance.”
Christopher Mahoney
San Francisco
(via Inc. Magazine)
Digital media and advertising technology. It surrounds and sometimes engulfs us. Business people, parents, legislators… we’re all forced to cope with technology and the advancements it brings. It perpetually confounds yet pleases us.
The commercialization of knowledge has been a big part of our advancing world. If there is a Knowledge Economy (a widely accepted business notion) might there be an Ignorance Economy too?
We live in a globalized, knowledge-centric world where services are replacing manufacturing and information is more valuable than physical stuff. Being ignorant today is dangerous… right? Well… not really. Not knowing can be empowering, freeing and can make one feel as powerful as knowing.
In a technically challenged world not knowing can sometimes feel just fine. People will even pay money to not know — so as to access desired goodies.
“As products from cars to computers become more and more technologically sophisticated, many consumers are content to let manufacturers and service companies take on the burden of understanding how such products work and how to repair them when they fail to work in the expected manner.”
The above is offered by Doctors Joanne Roberts (Newcastle University Business School) and John Armitage (Northumbria University) who are releasing a groundbreaking paper arguing for the existence of a growing, global economy based on what humans do not know (PDF). Specifically, they argue…
“… the so-called knowledge economy is one wherein the production and use of knowledge also implies the creation and exploitation of ignorance. For not only knowledge but also ignorance now plays a main role in the formation of advanced global capitalism.”
Drs. Roberts and Armitage successfully argue — for the first time — that ignorance is fundamentally and simultaneously tied to the global Knowledge Economy. They’re intertwined.
Capitalism, today, produces ignorance as a commercial product. As I’ll discuss in Part II, there is an unrivaled, growing demand for ignorance in the digital media and advertising industry that has led to the unbridled enrichment of few at the expense of many.
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(1) Comment
Big media (i.e. Viacom) is pissed and Google is in the cross-hairs. Why? Use of their copyrighted material on sites like YouTube for sure but there’s more.
Google is trying to appease entertainment Goliaths by
- Telling them “we’ll catch the copyright violators using our site with our slick technology” and alert you
- Cutting them in on future ad revenues… cash generated by video ad models (YouTube)
These advertising models have yet to be figured out (let alone proven). Waiting around for Google to figure it out and start cutting checks isn’t “adding shareholder value” if ya know what I mean.
News Corp’s Peter Chernin recently proclaimed that its MySpace could also begin to help solve the copyright problem — the same one Google seems reluctant to enter into. Hu? What? Yes, now both are promising they will police the MySpace and YouTube’s of the world… although Chernin clearly dares Google to jump first as he taunts them:
“YouTube could do a much more aggressive job about taking down content that is a copyright violator. It’s pretty safe to say that they [Google] have the technology available… it’s publicly available and I haven’t yet heard a lot about Google being technologically constrained.”
Is there anything behind Google and News Corp’s posturing on who’s imaginary copyright protection technology is better? Yes and here it is, fair reader. It’s called a tapdance to STALL, buy time and experiment.
As pointed out by my respected colleague, Amanda Watlington…
Isn’t this ‘my copyright detection beats your copyright detection’ just more of ‘my algo is better than your algo’ that we’ve known for years? Not quite. In an article entitled “The Cost of Copyright” Danny Bradbury discusses copyright detection technology, why the various parties do not seem willing to develop and adopt a single detection methodology which would yield a recognizable digital fingerprint for copyright materials. He points out that it’s about the advertising Benjamins ($$) that await the advertising network that can provide pinpoint targeting based on viewing patterns. Fingerprinting on video has the promise of delivering lots of potential revenue-producing information on viewing patterns. This information will become ever more valuable as advertisers seek to hone in on their prospects. “
In short, it’s all about the money and so long as Google AND digital-savvy big media can get away with stalling they will.
Google and News Corp aren’t out to protect copyrighted material — they’re out to convert it into cold cash.
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