Communities Dominate Brands Archive

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus in the World of Participatory Culture

Clay Shirky writes a very philosophical piece about culture/media and participation

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Professor Henry Jenkins of the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT articulates a world in which young people have a very different relationship with media consumption. This is the migration from consumption as an individual practice to consumption as a networked practice – which I might add is voluntary. Convergence Jenkins argues is also a culture phenomenon rather than a technological one

Culture Jenkins argues is today Participatory. We create, we share, we collaborate, we consume, we discuss. Henry Jenkins on Obama and the “We” Generation

When people consume and produce media together, when they pool their insights and information, mobilise to promote common interests, and function as grassroots intermediaries ? rather than talking about personal media, perhaps we should be talking about communal media or social commerce that becomes part of our lives as members of communities, whether experienced face-to-face at the most local level or over the Net.

This is an engaged, motivated and self-selected audience. If we accept Jenkins world view, this has profound implications on how we reach out and attract our customers, talk to our suppliers and how we create value. It was Jonathan Schwartz that said our 1000 bloggers at Sun have done more for this company than a $1bn ad campaign could have ever done. This is participatory culture at the coalface. Or we could reference wikipedia, World of Warcraft, Pop Idol, the Matrix, citizen journalism or social commerce platforms like ebay, MyNuMo or Spreadshirt.

Shirky also observes

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders–a lot of things we like–didn’t happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn’t until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society

Shirky says we have been on a bit of a bender recently and are just waking up to the reality that we posses a cognitive surplus – Wikipedia represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought.

And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads. This is a pretty big surplus.

Back to Shirky’s 4 year old

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for

An ancient Chinese proverb says: “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.? I like to say “People embrace what they create.”

If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen? And I’m betting the answer is yes.

Maybe the answer looks like this? or this or indeed this

Everything’s Not Lost: in the world of traditional media

Print media is struggling with a digital future and are Newspapers embracing the digital age?

The New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry?s deep malaise. The Grey Lady?s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America?s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On Tuesday April 29th Standard & Poor?s cut the firm?s debt rating to one notch above junk.

writes the Economist

Bill Gates believes

that the advertising business model for traditional media those venues where advertisers still channel most of their spending will fall apart faster in the coming five years as the kind of interactive, targeted advertising that is defining the Web comes to the fore. And we did ask Has Hollywood Gone with the Wind? And Tomi discussed in a great post Eyeballs vs Co-creating Consumers: Measuring Blyk

The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.

And

Mr Murdoch?s enthusiasm is a reminder that not all newspapers are suffering. He bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal?s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times.

Not all is lost, however. Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest Newspaper Next report from the American Press Institute. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming ?information and connection utilities?, through such offerings as local internet forums.

The idea that newspapers must broaden their vision to become local information and connection utilities, with products and services to touch every consumer and serve every business in a market

The concept of the whole market, a universe of consumers and businesses that reaches well beyond readers and advertisers, and that newspaper companies should be striving to reach and touch

Mega-jobs — important “jobs to be done” that a wide cross-section of any market will want and need, and therefore the first that newspaper companies should seek to address.

Writes the report -

Also the report asks: What will the 21st Century Consumer want and expect in the 21st century? the answer

people will want ? and will get from somewhere ? exactly the information, solution, contact or connection they seek, for whatever circumstance arises in their lives, whenever they want it, wherever they happen to be. Because their lives are local, much of it will be local. And they will use any convenient channel to get it.

Some of it will be news, but the vast bulk of it will be on topics more directly pertinent to their own lives, work, interests, circumstances, families, communities.

Businesses large and small will want ? and will get from somewhere ? the ability to reach precisely and measurably the kind of people they seek in local markets, with messages that will engage them, delivered in the most effective formats and channels, at prices that fit all levels of ability to pay.

Communities will want ? and will get from somewhere ? ways to interact, share knowledge and experiences, ask questions, give answers, debate issues, form networks and stay in touch. These will be not just geographic communities, but communities of shared interests.

So Newspapers need to adapt and harness those insights – as the report comments

It?s not difficult to predict these wants and needs, because they aren?t new; they?re as old as civilization. What changes over time are the technologies available to fulfill them and the forms, functions and business models of the solutions created.

But it does challenge who is the audience? Hyper local or super global? What is the business model and how do we create vlaue

And that’s we say about the insights in CDB -

So for example Gannett to Crowdsource News – Why communities dominate brands!

The change wrought by the networked information environment is structural ?challenging how democracies and markets have co-evolved over the last 150 years. Manuel Castells emphasizes the role of technology in the process of human transformation, particularly when we consider the central technology of our time, communication technology, which relates to the heart of the specificity of the human species: conscious, meaningful communication – It needs a new logic, common sense and language. This is the world of Flow data and the harnessing and application of data flows will also be transformational for news and media platforms.

Everything’s Not Lost: in the world of traditional media

Print media is struggling with a digital future and are Newspapers embracing the digital age?

The New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry?s deep malaise. The Grey Lady?s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America?s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On Tuesday April 29th Standard & Poor?s cut the firm?s debt rating to one notch above junk.

writes the Economist

Bill Gates believes

that the advertising business model for traditional media those venues where advertisers still channel most of their spending will fall apart faster in the coming five years as the kind of interactive, targeted advertising that is defining the Web comes to the fore. And we did ask Has Hollywood Gone with the Wind? And Tomi discussed in a great post Eyeballs vs Co-creating Consumers: Measuring Blyk

The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.

And

Mr Murdoch?s enthusiasm is a reminder that not all newspapers are suffering. He bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal?s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times.

Not all is lost, however. Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest Newspaper Next report from the American Press Institute. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming ?information and connection utilities?, through such offerings as local internet forums.

The idea that newspapers must broaden their vision to become local information and connection utilities, with products and services to touch every consumer and serve every business in a market

The concept of the whole market, a universe of consumers and businesses that reaches well beyond readers and advertisers, and that newspaper companies should be striving to reach and touch

Mega-jobs — important “jobs to be done” that a wide cross-section of any market will want and need, and therefore the first that newspaper companies should seek to address.

Writes the report -

Also the report asks: What will the 21st Century Consumer want and expect in the 21st century? the answer

people will want ? and will get from somewhere ? exactly the information, solution, contact or connection they seek, for whatever circumstance arises in their lives, whenever they want it, wherever they happen to be. Because their lives are local, much of it will be local. And they will use any convenient channel to get it.

Some of it will be news, but the vast bulk of it will be on topics more directly pertinent to their own lives, work, interests, circumstances, families, communities.

Businesses large and small will want ? and will get from somewhere ? the ability to reach precisely and measurably the kind of people they seek in local markets, with messages that will engage them, delivered in the most effective formats and channels, at prices that fit all levels of ability to pay.

Communities will want ? and will get from somewhere ? ways to interact, share knowledge and experiences, ask questions, give answers, debate issues, form networks and stay in touch. These will be not just geographic communities, but communities of shared interests.

So Newspapers need to adapt and harness those insights – as the report comments

It?s not difficult to predict these wants and needs, because they aren?t new; they?re as old as civilization. What changes over time are the technologies available to fulfill them and the forms, functions and business models of the solutions created.

But it does challenge who is the audience? Hyper local or super global? What is the business model and how do we create vlaue

And that’s we say about the insights in CDB -

So for example Gannett to Crowdsource News – Why communities dominate brands!

The change wrought by the networked information environment is structural ?challenging how democracies and markets have co-evolved over the last 150 years. Manuel Castells emphasizes the role of technology in the process of human transformation, particularly when we consider the central technology of our time, communication technology, which relates to the heart of the specificity of the human species: conscious, meaningful communication – It needs a new logic, common sense and language. This is the world of Flow data and the harnessing and application of data flows will also be transformational for news and media platforms.

Everything’s Not Lost: in the world of traditional media

Print media is struggling with a digital future and are Newspapers embracing the digital age?

The New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry?s deep malaise. The Grey Lady?s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America?s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On Tuesday April 29th Standard & Poor?s cut the firm?s debt rating to one notch above junk.

writes the Economist

Bill Gates believes

that the advertising business model for traditional media those venues where advertisers still channel most of their spending will fall apart faster in the coming five years as the kind of interactive, targeted advertising that is defining the Web comes to the fore. And we did ask Has Hollywood Gone with the Wind? And Tomi discussed in a great post Eyeballs vs Co-creating Consumers: Measuring Blyk

The ABC reported that for the 530 biggest dailies, average circulation in the past six months was 3.6% lower than in the same period a year earlier; for Sunday papers, it was 4.6% lower. Ad revenues are plunging across the board: by 22.3% at Media General, for example. In 2007 total newspaper revenues fell to $42.2 billion, not to be sniffed at, certainly, but a lot less than the peak of $48.7 billion in 2000.

And

Mr Murdoch?s enthusiasm is a reminder that not all newspapers are suffering. He bought the Wall Street Journal last year, and is investing in a vigorous expansion of its political coverage and international news. This foray on to the traditional turf of the Times seems to be working: the Journal?s circulation is rising. Another flourishing outlet is the web-only Huffington Post which is fast evolving beyond a series of political blogs into a fully fledged online newspaper with liberal sensibilities close to those of the New York Times.

Not all is lost, however. Plenty of innovation is taking place, particularly at local papers, as the latest Newspaper Next report from the American Press Institute. It quotes 24 examples of newspapers becoming ?information and connection utilities?, through such offerings as local internet forums.

The idea that newspapers must broaden their vision to become local information and connection utilities, with products and services to touch every consumer and serve every business in a market

The concept of the whole market, a universe of consumers and businesses that reaches well beyond readers and advertisers, and that newspaper companies should be striving to reach and touch

Mega-jobs — important “jobs to be done” that a wide cross-section of any market will want and need, and therefore the first that newspaper companies should seek to address.

Writes the report -

Also the report asks: What will the 21st Century Consumer want and expect in the 21st century? the answer

people will want ? and will get from somewhere ? exactly the information, solution, contact or connection they seek, for whatever circumstance arises in their lives, whenever they want it, wherever they happen to be. Because their lives are local, much of it will be local. And they will use any convenient channel to get it.

Some of it will be news, but the vast bulk of it will be on topics more directly pertinent to their own lives, work, interests, circumstances, families, communities.

Businesses large and small will want ? and will get from somewhere ? the ability to reach precisely and measurably the kind of people they seek in local markets, with messages that will engage them, delivered in the most effective formats and channels, at prices that fit all levels of ability to pay.

Communities will want ? and will get from somewhere ? ways to interact, share knowledge and experiences, ask questions, give answers, debate issues, form networks and stay in touch. These will be not just geographic communities, but communities of shared interests.

So Newspapers need to adapt and harness those insights – as the report comments

It?s not difficult to predict these wants and needs, because they aren?t new; they?re as old as civilization. What changes over time are the technologies available to fulfill them and the forms, functions and business models of the solutions created.

But it does challenge who is the audience? Hyper local or super global? What is the business model and how do we create vlaue

And that’s we say about the insights in CDB -

So for example Gannett to Crowdsource News – Why communities dominate brands!

The change wrought by the networked information environment is structural ?challenging how democracies and markets have co-evolved over the last 150 years. Manuel Castells emphasizes the role of technology in the process of human transformation, particularly when we consider the central technology of our time, communication technology, which relates to the heart of the specificity of the human species: conscious, meaningful communication – It needs a new logic, common sense and language. This is the world of Flow data and the harnessing and application of data flows will also be transformational for news and media platforms.

From SatNav to SatCom

The future is already here but its just not evenly distributed

is a phrase attributed to may people – but the thought came to my mind when reading about the creation of a new service 230 Miles of Love

Interesting, then, that this week brought news of a novel way of using a satnav, which seems to encourage drivers to engage with their surroundings rather than simply tell them how to get from A to B and let them daydream (metaphorically, of course) through anything in between.

Called 230 Miles of Love, it is billed as the world’s first “satcom” – a free series of comedy sketches you can download to your satnav or GPS mobile phone, which automatically play at relevant points along the M6. It was made using a programme called Geovative, which allows users to plot a GPS tour that can contain audio, images and text. Though it sounds complicated, it is just a step up from the programme many satnav owners use to alert them to the location of speed cameras.

After a shaky start, the satcom first made me laugh after junction three near Birmingham, when drivers are weighing up whether to pay the ?4.50 for a speedy toll road. Ever the cheapskate, I plumped for the free road, and just as my heart was sinking after spying a sea of brake lights ahead, another sketch kicked in telling me what a terrible choice I had made.

But 230 miles of Love is not the only version we also have Road Tour which can fulfill your interests around Royal Palaces, Castles, Monuments, Places of Worship, Pubs and Inns, Historic Homes, Battle Fields and Gardens and Landscapes.

And finally

The Good Pub Guide has produced a satnav version, which alerts drivers to the best watering holes nearby, and on the TomTom website, users can log in and share their own routes and recommendations, for example the best greasy spoon cafes in the north-west, or the most accommodating hotels for bikers.

All are examples of “locative media”, ideas which aim to exploit developments in “locative technologies” – GPS standalone systems, GPS mobile phones, wireless networks and satnavs.

Fascinating

TV advertising: moving the deck chairs on the titanic

I have been chatting to a few colleagues about metrics in relation to TV and I was pointed to Marketing in the era of accountability

Which I would have thought should have been free but there you go.

Anyway I had a quick glimpse at the report and it does have some interesting suggestions as one of my colleagues pointed out

It?s also why, in theory, the link between market research and media agencies is a good idea. Fast consumer data, feeding into planners who can take remedial action and adjust campaigns accordingly can work (there?s a research agency in Holland called Daphne, now owned by GFK, that does exactly this).

The report draws

a distinction between effectiveness (doing the right thing) and accountability (being seen to do the right thing). Authors Les Binet, European director at DDB Matrix, and consultant Peter Field argue that, with accountability high on the corporate agenda, marketers are opting for measures that prove to the board that something is happening. ‘It is not just a question of marketers measuring the wrong thing,’ says Field. ‘They are being pushed to do it by this move to accountability.’

Another common failing is holding up a single metric as proof of success. Instead, a suite of measures should be used to judge effectiveness.

And that has been a conversation for the last decade.

Now for the deck chair bit

If some commentators in the marketing industry are to be believed, TV is on its death bed. But, in fact, the IPA study reveals that it remains the most effective medium. TV, which builds emotion better than any other medium, has been the driving force of many of the best campaigns in the IPA’s archives, even those with small budgets. For brands looking to build fame, TV remains essential.

If anything, TV is becoming more important than ever. The average rise in market share accounted for by campaigns where TV is the lead medium has increased over the past 20 years. And with greater choice of TV channels allowing more effective targeting, the cost of reaching a given audience via TV has declined. The authors estimate that TV is now 42% more effective than it was in the 80s.

Now that just can’t be true – if you define TV as terrestrial/cable broadcast to a limited and fragmented audience. If a mass audience today is 6-8 million in the UK – reach and the cost of reach has only increased.
The economics just don’t make sense.

If one talks about a more intelligent approach to advertising wrapped around audio-visual content then I am ready to sit down and have the discussion.

There is more on ROI and Loyalty – but my view is effective communications is about delivering on a number of marketing needs at the same time.

Apple for me is a case in point – built around the end user experience via software hardware and 3D experiences via its stores it delivers multiple benefits – 365 days of the year.

This idea of salami slicing acquisition, from awareness, loyalty, raising ARPU blah blah is simply an increasingly redundant way of looking at the world. And frankly boring. Its an exhausted industrial mindset trying to shoehorn itself into the economics and logic of the networked world.

I think we will always have TV – of course we will – its called audio-visual content the question is how is it made, financed, and distributed and who watches where and when.

I have been a little provocative – but if you look at what the World Rally Championships or the Audi channel that is also advertising – but not in the shape of the usual deck chairs.

The dotcom dinosaurs

Vic Keegan gives us a glimpse into the world of what comes next after the dotcom dinosaurs have ruled the planet for the last 20 years.

Vic writes

I don’t know whether wigix will be successful or, if it is, whether it will merely trigger a radical response from eBay. But it is unequivocally good news that companies are emerging to take on the dotcom dinosaurs. If wigix even partially succeeds, it will show others what can be done. Will Google, Yahoo and Microsoft be the next targets?

David vs. Goliath

To compete with eBay, wigix is doing something imaginative and maybe foolhardy. It is inviting anyone to put up products (even if they are not selling them) or just product categories not on its database, and in return they get 1% of the transactional profits from those products as long as they stay an active user.

The data flow wars

Way back in 2003 Tomi and I started working on a project called Communities Dominate Brands – today the very things that wrote about have become – well mainstream. Its a crowded house these days.

So – here’s another road-sign for you – that data, and the extraction and refining of that data to support commercial communications is about to become mainstream – this new currency will becme the black gold of the 21st Century – in the future we will fight over oil, food, water and data. If we are living in a world that is increasingly networked, if we are living in a world where social intraction is a primary function online and on the mobile and on converged platforms, then you need data analytics that can understand these social data flows. This is beyond the traditonal fare

A piece in strategy and business was worth mentioning that examines Media Old world vs. Media New World

As unsophisticated and unreliable as traditional media measurement approaches may have been in the past, they did provide standards and currencies that enabled marketers, buying agencies, and media companies to transact business. Today, however, this equilibrium has become unstable. Marketers demand more effectiveness and efficiency from their media buys. Digital media are reaching critical mass with consumers. And the promise of more granular (or even real-time) data capture of consumer response to advertising is tantalizingly close to realization.

And we also had a point of view that we extrapolated upon here And IBM recently produced a report on the End of Advertising as we know it This was supported by PwC on How Consumer Conversations will Transform Business

What gets measured gets made

But the media metrics for the new digital media environment are still of uneven quality. They lack the standardization that would enable the simple comparison of advertising effectiveness both within the online environment and across other media channels. Marketers, agencies, and media companies all agree that improvements in these metrics are going to be essential; without them, it will be difficult to profit in an advertising market increasingly characterized by more choices among more media. In other words, there will need to be a wholesale shift to metrics that are both outcome based and comparable across many channels.

With refined data we can ask this rather pressing question: Do we want 6 feet of junk mail or a 29% response rate?

So we will go on a journey to socialise e-commerce – There is going to be energies focused on the design and analytics of social collaborative filtering and social systems

There is going to be work on Algorithms and system design connected to social tagging

The Media infrastructure will be rebuilt to understand and measure to collaborative social media eco-system – it will migrate from being the dumb machine – to a very smart machine as the audience has become not a dumb and passive audience, but an interactive and Participatory audience and a Participatory culture

The Swiss Role Dilemma
How do you separate data that is about seeking information vs. data that is about transaction? We build intelligent directories built around behaviour classification.

Dynamic data flows
Then these systems are integrated into self-learning systems that can process data flows that make petabytes look like kilobytes

The chart shows 90,000 communities of roughly 290 people, making around 25 million nodes.

Manuel Castells says that the linear process of our familiar analogue world has been inverted. Time is condensed and stretched. Past, present and future and altered and reconfigured. We need to take external and social structures into account when deciding how to provide better and improved communications and services.

Material existence becomes less relevant in a world of networked and information based social networks. And of course that asks questions as to how we map and measure that social networks. This is a world that is as mind bending as Quantum mechanics – why then should media not go through the same transformation? We witnessed the ripples on the seashore of the dotcom bubble that became the surging tsunami to our recent history, more powerful, more destructive, and more paradigm busting.

Revolutions, Paradigms and Great Surges of Development

A great surge is defined as as the process by which a technological revolution and its paradigm propagate across the economy, leading to structural changes in production, distribution, communication and consumption as well as t profound and qualitative changes in society. The process evolves from small beginnings, in restricted sectors and geographic regions and ends up encompassing the bulk of activities in the core country or countries and diffusing out towards further and further peripheries.

Further
Until the 1980′s, the prevalent organisations was the one that serves as the optimal framework for deploying the mass-production revolution: the centralised, heirarchical pyramid with functional compartments.

This logic no longer applies – so what happens next?

These difficult long term processes of transformation are in the nature of the capitalist system and involve intense interactions between the economy and social institutions as well as profound changes in both, Each technological revolution is received as a shock, and its diffusion encounters powerful resistance both in the established institutions and in people themselves. Hence, the full unfolding of its wealth-creating potential as first has rather chaotic and contradictory social effects, it later will demand a significant institutional recomposition. This will include changes in the regulatory framework affecting all markets and economic activities as well as a redesign as a whole range of institutions.

And that is what we in right here – right now. The transformation of governance, of society and culture. Today we stand centre square in the gales of creative destruction

Gutenberg and Flow

So I posted about Flow and then Gutenberg

Of course Gutenberg was the first to unleash the flow of knowledge, ideas and communication.

Today the projection looks like this

The unleashing of such data flows are the equivalent to Gutenberg unleashing the first 15million books printed in the first 2o years of the printing press.

So are such data flows going to deliver a new Renaissance?

Opening the doors of the modern age

Johannes Gutenberg was indeed the key to opening the door of the modern age.

I watched a programme last night presented by Stephen Fry taking us through the story of printing and its father Johannes Gutenberg.

Stephen Fry asks why it took so long to take ink, paper and type and combine all these skills to be able to print and publish.

3 million books are published every year. The amazing stat is this one however, in the 15 years after Gutenberg printed the 42 Line Bible 20 million books were published – this was indeed the ignition for The Renaissance.

Marshall McLuhan argues in the Gutenberg Galaxy that technologies are not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which people are re-invented. The invention of movable type was the decisive moment in the change from a culture in which all the senses partook of a common interplay to a tyranny of the visual. He also argued that the development of the printing press led to the creation of nationalism, dualism, domination of rationalism, automatisation of scientific research, uniformation and standardisation of culture and alienation of individuals.

The 42 Line Bible Fry says was the signpost to the future -to a new information age fueled by the power of the printed word.

And so we have migrated from Gutenberg to Google

As technologies for electronic texts develop into ever more sophisticated engines for capturing different kinds of information, radical changes are underway in the way we write, transmit and read texts. Peter Shillingsburg considers the potentials and pitfalls, the enhancements and distortions, the achievements and inadequacies of electronic editions of literary texts. In tracing historical changes in the processes of composition, revision, production, distribution and reception, Shillingsburg reveals what is involved in the task of transferring texts from print to electronic media. He explores the potentials, some yet untapped, for electronic representations of printed works in ways that will make the electronic representation both more accurate and more rich than was ever possible with printed forms. However, he also keeps in mind the possible loss of the book as a material object and the negative consequences of technology.

No more scriptoriums as we have our laptops

So what comes next?