January 16, 2016--Hooked?

For some time in this place I have written about my struggles to get comfortable with the new media. Especially "mobile devices," which I understand to mean primarily smartphones, while mobile devices down here in Florida are more walkers and wheelchairs.

I am feeling left behind as the two generations succeeding mine seem so naturally comfortable with texting, tweeting, and snap-chatting. I watch them thumbing their iPhones at preternatural speed as they dodge traffic on Broadway, while eating out, and when waiting on line to get into a club or movie.

Though viscerally discomforted by this--partly, if I'm honest, largely because this feeling of being left out is more personal than technological--I have tried to see something positive deriving from all of this hardware and software.

The amateur historian in me knows that there were similar, worrisome things said about the paradigm-shifting impact on culture, society, and the Church brought about by the Gutenberg Revolution and the resulting proliferation of books.

For the most part, that worked out well. But mobile devices that are now possessed by billions around the world and hundreds of millions mainly young people here in the United States, may be turning out to be quite a different, less benign or liberating story.

Are we seeing the emergence of a passive generation of techno-zombies hooked on connectivity?

To help sketch the extent of one aspect of this, here is an excerpt from Jacob Weisberg's essay in the most recent issue of The New York Review, "We Are Hopelessly Hooked":

Hands and minds are continuously occupied texting, e-mailing, liking, tweeting, watching YouTube videos, and playing Candy Crush. 

Americans spend an average of five and a half hours a day with digital media, more than half of that time on mobile devices, according to the research firm eMarketer. Among some groups, the numbers range much higher. In one recent survey, female students at Baylor University reported using their cell phones an average of ten hours a day. Three quarters of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds say that they reach for their phones immediately upon waking in the morning. Once out of bed, we check our phones 221 times a day--an average of every 4.3 minutes--according to a UK study. 

This number may actually be too low, since people tend to underestimate their own mobile usage. In a 2015 Gallup survey, 61 percent of people said they checked their phones less frequently than others they knew. . . . 

What does it mean to shift overnight from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at machines? We wouldn't be always clutching smartphones if we didn't believe they made us safer, more productive less bored, and were useful in all the ways a computer in your pocket can be useful. 

At the same time, smartphone owners describe feeling "frustrated" and "distracted." [Though] in a 2015 Pew survey, 70 percent of respondents said their phones made them feel freer while 30 percent said they felt like a leash. Nearly half the eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year olds said they used their phones to "avoid others around you."

Weisberg then cites Sherry Turkle's book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age:

The picture she paints is both familiar and heartbreaking: parents who are constantly distracted on the playground and at the dinner table; children who are frustrated that they can't get their parents' undivided attention; gatherings where friends who are present vie for attention with virtual friends; classrooms where professors gaze out at a sea of semi-engaged multitaskers; and a dating culture in which infinite choices undermines the ability to make emotional commitments.

It does feel like a very new world. I will continue to struggle to get comfortable with it and to find good things to say about where we are headed. In the meantime I do have my books.

May 14, 2015--"Mobile Is Now a Magic Word"

Thus proclaimed the New York Times yesterday in two articles above the fold about Verizon's $4 billion dollar deal to acquire AOL.

Remember AOL's dial-up days? Well, that remnant of AOL's business wouldn't be worth $4 bill, but its lesser-known mobile and advertising technology is. At least to Verizon.

We'll see. Remember the Time Warner-AOL merger? From that disastrous situation Verizon should beware.

It appears that this time the deal is all about mobile. Since people are turning more to their mobile devices (smart phones and such) than their clunky PCs and laptops, everyone in the IT business is trying to figure out how to make money off those tiny screens. Traditional ads don't work so well in five-inch formats so what to do?

In Verizon's case scoop up AOL. In the case of traditional news companies and magazines, both of which are turning quickly into dinosaurs, it appears that they are scrambling to move as fast as they can beyond their digital offerings (like the NY Times on line) because these, though making some money, are not making enough to sustain high-cost operations such as the Times beyond the next few years.

So with newspapers such as the Times and the Wall Street Journal and networks such as NBC News realizing that young people especially--the Holy Grail for some reason for advertisers--are getting most of their news from places like Facebook, they are trying to figure out what to do--even at their potential peril. And so they are moving to make deals with Facebook which would allow them to publish some of their products--articles in the case if the Times and WSJ, and video content in the case of NBC. With or without ads since the reason NBC and the Times are agreeing to do this is the hope that mobile users will see what they are missing by not reading the whole NY Times or tuning in to the Nightly News to watch whomever will wind up replacing Brian Williams.

Traditional media have no choice because, as the Times reports, "That's where the audience is." The fear, of course, is that Facebookers will read one feed on Facebook from the Times and rather than race to subscribe to the paper's on-line edition, will feel that they got enough. They now know more about what is going on in Saudi Arabia but have no interest in anything else. So why pay the Times a monthly subscriber free when they can get what they want for free via Facebook.

The Times already represents from 14 to 16 percent of all Facebook traffic--amazing and counter-intuitive--and so they are gambling that this new arrangement will net them more direct readers.

Again, we'll see.

Facebook already plays a gatekeeper role in regard to the news available to members. Including what they choose to put on line from the Times. So who knows what the result of all this reconfiguration will be. It could work for the paper of record or accelerate putting them out of business.

So where does that leave me? I've been running Behind the (New York) Times for nearly 10 years. Thus far I've published 2,582 posts. Will this mean that if I want to try to keep my blogging going for another decade, with the Times relegated to spot appearances on Facebook, that I'll be needing to call what I do something else?

Say Faceless.com or Saving Face.com or, my current favorite, Face It.com.

All suggestions are welcome.

May 13, 2015--Mother of Invention

"You haven't taken your nose out of that book all day."

"It's not a great book," I said, "But as you know, I'm fascinated by the Wright Brothers, and the new David McCullough biography is still fascinating. I mean, to me."

"Fascinating in what way?" Rona asked.

"You remember how about ten years ago we visited Kitty Hawk and were so impressed by what had happened there between 1901 and 1903, when the brothers were the first flew? The book is quite good on the Wrights' time there so that part is fascinating. The rest, only so-so."

"I do remember that. And though I hate flying in small planes I agreed to go up in a two-seater with you so we could fly over the same landscape where they had lived and worked. From Kitty Hawk to Kill Devil Hills."

"And then a few years later how, when in their hometown, Dayton, Ohio, we visited their workshop--a bicycle factory--and found the field not far from there--Huffman Prairie--where over the next few years in hundreds of flights they perfected their flying machine and learned more and more about controlled flight."

"So what do you think?" Rona asked, "Is their invention of the airplane the most important, world-changing invention of the 20th century?"

"One of them. To that I'd add electricity, the light bulb, radio, wireless broadcasting . . ."

"What about TV and, to me the most important invention of all, the computer?"

"Probably the computer. Not just the computer itself but the incredible software and peripherals that make the Internet, which we access with computers, so powerful."

"And," Rona said, "make social media like Facebook and Twitter possible. More than a billion people use them."

"Then there are the invented ways to access the Internet and all that derives from that--from clunky computers to all those so-called mobile devices."

"As with many others--all of these are powerful for both good and ill."

"Planes qualify as well," I said, "Only 12 years after the first flight, during the First World War, combatants of all stripes used planes for reconnaissance."

"And aerial bombing."

"All true," I said. "But back to inventions. We could have fun making a list of the most important ones of the past hundred years."

"But that would exclude the airplane since it first flew 102 years ago." She smiled at remembering that.

"Good point. Or we could see what we come up with if we tried to make a list of the most important inventions of all time."

"You mean like the wheel?"

"Yes, that's on many people's list as the single most important invention."

"How about the invention of democracy?" Rona asked, "Would that quality?"

"Sure. But maybe let's confine ourselves to material things like the plane and Internet. That feels like more fun."

"Well, we've already made a good beginning with the radio, TV, the light bulb and of course electricity itself."

"Though I'm not sure electricity is an invention. Doesn't it just exist and then people like Alexander Graham Bell and Edison figured out how to use it?"

"I'll have to look that up," Rona said, "And speaking about electricity, some would include the electric chair."

I looked at her skeptically. "Some saw it as more humane than hanging or the firing squad."

"I'll give you that one. But how about atomic energy?"

"Also it's maybe not an invention. But coming up with various uses for it certainly qualifies. Again for good or ill."

"If we want to talk about weapons, there have been hundreds of major inventions, including some--like say, guided missiles--that were world-changing."

"How about the printing press?"

"If you add movable type I think you've identified a paradigm-shifting one. With the ability to print books, periodicals, and newspapers maybe in its time it was as significant as the Internet."

"Then there's a very different category of inventions--musical instruments."

"Excellent point. Life would not be the same without the piano and violin and hundreds of others."

"What about in the medical field?"

"Probably as many inventions as for weapons. From anesthesia to . . ."

"Huge."

"To penicillin and then antibiotics. Also, vaccinations, pain killers, and tranquilizers."

"And testing techniques like all those for analyzing blood and MRIs. All inventions."

"For surgery alone there are hundreds. And don't forget the Pill. That changed the way we live as much as anything."

"How about in astronomy? Telescopes, satellites, and such? They also allow for accurate weather forecasting, which in itself is another invention."

"Related to that, there are all the navigation tools like the compass, which I'm sure some would say also changed the world. And of a very different sorry, how about air conditioning? One of my favorites," I said.

"Maybe I'd agree to refrigeration being on the list of top 25 or so, but not the AC, though I know you say you can't live without it."

"True. And to me personally at about the same level of importance, I'd add ATM machines--I hate standing on line at the bank."

"That's silly."

"Admittedly, but I'd also add another of my personal favorites."

"What's that?"

"The E-ZPass. I also hate waiting on line at toll booths."

"Time for you to stick your nose back in the book," Rona said. "The Wright Brothers are beckoning."

"Wait, one more, how about you--you couldn't live without your blowdryer."

April 22, 2015--That's the Way It Was

Little remembered, Roone Arledge did more to shape contemporary TV network sports and news than anyone better known.

From 1968 through 1986 he was president of ABC Sports. In that role, to personalize coverage, especially for women, he was responsible for adding "up-close-and-personal" packages to ABC's airing of the Olympics games and, for an almost broader audience turned ABC's Wide World of Sports into a mega-hit that weekly featured everything even quasi-sports-like, including barrel jumping from various hotels' ice rinks in the Borscht Belt, cliff diving from Acapulco, and demolition derbies.

With all that success ABC executives in 1977 made him the network's president for news and the rest is history.

Up to that point on places such as the Tiffany Network (CBS) the news was presented as serious business--wars, famines, revolutions, presidential nominating conventions (wall-to-wall coverage was the norm), and the occasional natural disaster. With the understanding that to deserve air time the disasters had to measure at least 7.0 on the Richter Scale. No mudslides in Malibu could pass the Walter-Cronkite test.

So when Cronkite signed off each night with, "And that's the way it is," that was the way it was.

Cut to 2015.

We live in a very different news universe where what is "reported" weeknights on the three network news shows is no longer that much about news. And no longer appeals to a mass audience. Particularly does not appeal to young viewers. Thus all the Lavitra commercials.

Almost as many get their news from Jon Stewart on the Daily Show as from Scott Pelley on CBS. And many more than that get their news on line via so-called mobile devices.

Network news mavens have figured out that all day long people with smart phones check their favorite websites to see what's happening and when doing that tend to click on things that offer more visual than written content.

So, last week there was a lot of exciting footage, mainly shot by bystanders with iPhones, of out-of-control police that went viral. From video of a policeman in Arizona careening intentionally onto the sidewalk to run down someone fleeing from the police and other repeatable footage of a 73-year-old police volunteer in Oklahoma who shot and killed an alleged suspect with what he thought was his taser, mistaking his service revolver for it.

And just the other day there were vivid images of a young black man being subdued, shackled, and tossed into a police van by three white cops where he may or may not have had his spine snapped, which in turn led to his death.

Knowing all these images, and thus "stories," had been in wide circulation long before 6:30 P.M. and knowing that their residual Baby-Boomer audiences do not search the Web all day seeking the amusing and lurid, the networks began their broadcasts and filled half their time with these videos. In effect to help their aging, tech-phobe viewers catch up with what the more wired had been looking in on through the day.

So this is what network news has devolved to--showcases for viral videos for the unplugged.

On ABC, where news as entertainment was invented and reached its apotheosis, where no distinction is made between fun, the grotesque, or the urgent, David Muir is the least credentialed, most unabashedly hunky, blow-dried "anchor" of all time. On his show one day last week (and "show" it is), though Barack Obama was meeting in Panama City with other North and South American leaders, we saw the police videos over and over again--in slower-and-slower slow motion and closer-and-closer detail (including the pop shot--the police cruiser slamming into the fleeing suspect) there was literally no mention of the historic meeting between Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro.