For the next two days I’ll be Tweeting, blogging, and otherwise chattering about the annual Personal Democracy Forum in NYC. PDF is the premier online politics event.  While South By Southwest gets a ton of credit for its interactive conference, politics is really just a track within the larger program.  PDF is solely focused on how we, as a society, are changing the way we interact with campaigns, candidates, and governemnt.

If you’re interested, use Twitter Search to follow the discussion.

Since the day job launched a blog on telecom issues, I have confined my rants about such topics to that forum.  This is a “gray area” kind of post.  It’s not really policy related, but it touches on the Internet and video.  I’m writing it here because it is not, in any way, the view of my employer.

At issue is a column by the Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro about the recently announced TV Everywhere plan cable companies are pursuing.  In his column Rob writes:

Yes, you read that right: To watch this new batch of TV shows online, you’d have to sign up for a traditional pay-TV plan.

The TV Everywhere idea has been a dream of some media people for the last few years; see, for instance, Mark Cuban’s defense of the idea. But I don’t get it. At all.

Well, my immediate thought is, “You’re right.  You don’t get it.”  But after that, words fail me.

First, Rob, this isn’t “a new batch of TV shows”.  This is the content you’re already paying for, but you’re now allowed to view it online.  In order to view Pay-TV online, you need to pay for Pay-TV.  That’s sort of the whole point.

Pegoraro suggests that this is like requiring people to pay for a subscription to the Washington Post in order to take a college prep test course.  Ummm… No.  That’s not at all the same thing.  TV everywhere is, however, the equivalent of saying, “If you want to eat your McDonald’s Happy Meal in the park, you still have to pay for the McDonald’s happy meal.”

Next, Pegoraro asserts that incredibly complicated things like “authentication” are way to difficult to comprehend or apply:

Set aside such operational issues as authentication (how do you verify that one person’s a Comcast/DirecTV/Fios/etc. customer and another is not?)…

Ummm… How do you know if someone is a Gmail user or not?  Well, Rob, they’re called “accounts”.  When you subscribe, they create one.  They come with something called an “account number” or a “user name” and a “password”.  When you want to access your service online, you type (that big flat thing in front of your monitor is called a keyboard) those pieces of information into a form, click “submit” and voila!  You are authenticated.

Pegoraro, again:

If somebody wants to watch video online, let ‘em: Charge them a fee, make money off their attention through advertising–better yet, give people a choice between watching ads or paying for an ad-free experience. But don’t force them to sign up for an unrelated, non-Internet service.

Sure, because the “ad-supported” model is working so well for broadcasters and newspapers. Even YouTube (ad supported video) is projected to lose between $175 million and $470 million this year.  Even TV advertising is a failing venture because people are skipping the commercials.  Hollywood has begun writing the commercials directly into the script to stave off that practice.  NBC recently announced that Jay Leno’s show in the fall will be “DVR-proof” to force advertising on the public.

Do such actions seem like the tactics of a business model that works?

So let’s take a business model that works (a hybrid ad/subscriber model) and force it to pursue a failing business model because you want content for free - content that may cost millions per episode to produce.

As for the comment that you are forcing someone “to sign up for an unrelated, non-Internet service”, that’s still ridiculous no matter how many times you repeat it.  This isn’t a non-Internet service. It’s the same service you already subscribe to, you just have more ways to consume it now.  However, if you want to consume it, you have to subscribe.

Finally, Pegoraro suggests that media companies should simply give up and make all their media available for free:

Repeat after me: Trying to introduce an artificial scarcity of easily-duplicated content on the Internet does not work. If you set up boundaries that make no sense to your customers, you will simply cede the field to bootleg redistribution of your work. Fighting this principle is like trying to push water uphill–with a broom.

Well, actually, Rob.  Most cable content isn’t available online for free - even through bootleg.  Some of the most popular shows on cable are HGTV’s design programs.  I challenege you to go find a readily available bootleg source of them.  Go ahead, I’ll wait…

…

…

Back yet?  What about ESPN sporting events?  They’re all available for free elsewhere, right?  No?  What about NFL games?  Surely the satellite guys give those away for free and you don’t need to subscribe to get the Sunday ticket, right?  No?  Hmmm…  Well what about HBO’s programming.  You can get Entourage episodes for free all over the net, right?  Really?  Only the old ones that have been released for sale well after the air date?

How can that be?  How can people control such things?  How can they possibly defeat the bootleg distribution of their work?  Because they don’t make them available online for free?  Perhaps.

The fact is, despite Rob’s characterization of Pay-TV as “easily-duplicated content”, it’s simply not true.  Look at YouTube.  The most popular video sharing site will disable the soundtrack to your video if the audio patterns in the file match copyrighted content.  Sure.  You could cruise BitTorrents looking for content. And many do.  Those sites are constantly defending against their copyright violations and go out of business regardless of the legitimacy they claim (AllOfMP3.com, anyone?).

You can also find websites that show grainy, handicam captured versions of first-run films - often before they appear in theaters.  But the quality sucks. Under Pegoraro’s theory, movie theaters should simply give up the fight and make all movies (regardless of the cost to produce and market them) open to the public at no cost on day one.  Better yet, just close all the theaters and let people download the movies for free?  Heck, the studio could easily make up those $30 million salaries and production budgets by displaying an ad for mortgage caluclators right along side the film, right?

Mrs. Quip and I were talking about people I have worked with that are now running for office, and the fact that I have no interest in doing so. The main thrust of the discussion was whether or not I would be disqualified for having been very upfront with people about past drug use.

(To be clear, I haven’t consumed anything stronger than a mojito since I was about 23, but I also won’t claim the “I tried it once” argument because it is just disingenuous)

Anyway, Mrs. Quip suggested that marijuana and cocaine - and even substances like heroine, acid and ecstasy - simply aren’t that big of a deal now since studies indicate a staggering number of people have tried them.

She did, however, draw a line at meth use.

I’m not sure where the line exists, but I’m sure it’s still there. I’m not sure the American public would be cool with a President that used to do shrooms, LSD, or other hallucinogens. I agree that meth is also likely to preclude you from holding high office.

I’m not trying to rehash charges of drug/substance abuse from past elections. I’m just curious to know what impact drugs may have on future elections.

Drop a comment and let me know what you think.

Recently I have been troubled by something and I was having a hard time putting a finger on what it was.  As I was scanning RSS feeds and Google Alerts this morning a number of articles with similar headlines jumped out at me.  They all shared a common theme about the dangers of social media “experts” and “silos” within companies.  Reading them helped crystallize some of my own shifting thoughts on the proper role of social media, and even the Internet more broadly, within an organization or campaign.

An AdAge article by Jonah Bloom titled Dedicated Social-Media Silos? That’s the Last Thing We Need caught my eye and I took a read.  Bloom thesis is pretty sound - when a “new way” appears, people split into two camps.  The adherents or adopters of the new way begin to see it as a critical component of future planning and separate from those who do not adapt.

Every time an apparently foreign object is identified… the inhabitants split, roughly speaking, into two parties — those who fear the foreign body and those who are excited by it. The excited annex the object and create their own nation around it. The fearful homelanders breathe a sigh of relief and go back to doing whatever it was they were doing — albeit with just a few nagging fears about the ambitions of the fledgling country being built next door.

I have, myself, led the march of adherents in several instances and find I am still doing so today.  I have, for much of my career, seen the “nagging fears“.  I sense the derision and skepticism every time my fellow blogger and I walk the halls at our office and hear the “there go the ‘bloggers’ with their ‘Twitters’ and their ‘FaceySpaces”‘.”  He and I often wonder if the first media guy at the association heard, “there goes the ‘TV’ guy with his ’saturation buy’ and his ‘gross rating points’.”

When people sense change, but fear or don’t understand it, they mock it.  They make it different.

But the adherents to the new way are no different.  Look at my old blog post that I linked above.  I sound like a cokcy prick. Only my way can save us.

At the RNC I led the creation of a new Internet division charged with overseeing all things digital.  It was, to say the least, a mistake in retrospect.  The problem was not one of divisional boundaries.  As Bloom argues:

By dedicating resources and attention to the new medium, discipline or, in social media’s case, idea, those who work in the field are able to quickly advance it and ensure that it prospers.

The problem, however, is that the new and old states cannot exist successfully without the other, a fact they realize after they have set up separate and often competitive fiefdoms that barely speak the same language.

Elevating the importance of the eCampaign division at the RNC was beneficial as it made people think differently about the role of the Internet. Over the long term, however, I believe it has ultimately proved harmful because it has created a new layer of bureaucracy.  Further, the focus on how to be tech-savvy has, I believe, detracted from the larger mission of how to be savvy.

I am hereby reversing my earlier position that the Internet be given special prominence in your organization or campaign.

The RNC dodesn’t need a division for the Internet, they need people (not a person) in Communications that recognize the Internet’s role as a channel for multiple types of communications. That could be blog outreach, banner advertising, SEO, social media, or countless other ways to move a message or have a conversation.

The RNC needs people in political that understand how these tools can be used for organizing, and more importantly, how the people can be empowered via these tools to organize themselves.

The RNC needs people in finance that understand the difference between revised direct mail copy and good e-mail.  They need people who understand SocNets and the way to leverage them to make small dollars add up to big bucks.

Your online media is no more, and no less important than anything else you do.  The fact that you can use new media to more quickly attract and reach customers or voters has little relevance if you have no idea what to say to them and no idea what you want them to do.

Before I became “an Internet guru” (not my word choice, but one that I hear when I’m introduced), I was simply a political operative.  I did statistical analysis to determine voting patterns and I focused on things like voter files, turnout models, and coalition building.

When I listen to twenty-something consultants taking about the Internet and what it will do, most of that is gone.  There is much discussion of the long tail and the crowdsourcing, but little discussion of the offline mechanics of politics - as if every conversation in every diner in America has been supplanted with Twitter.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I strongly believe that every conversation taking place at every diner in America is currently taking place online.  But for most people, the real world is still their playground of choice.  We cannot become so focused on our love of innovation that we lose sight of the core technology at the heart of politics - people.

Just as books changed the way we told stories, radio changed the number of people to whom we could tell them, and video changed the richness of our narrative, the Internet will empower us all to be both story teller and audience.  The story, however, is still the same, and no media can claim supremacy. Before we act high and mighty, we must, as Bloom says, look at what we are leaving behind.

But What About Jacob

Ok, so what if they don’t go with a completely unsatisfactory ending.

Let’s assume that the battle between good and evil, wrong and right, darkness and light, black and white, has a point.  The season finale introduced a few things that we may need to reconcile.

It is clear that Jacob and company have been on the island a VERY long time. As the sailing vessel (I must assume it is The Black Rock), cruises along the coastline, our would be Johnny Cash (the man in black) asks Jacob if he brought them to the island and is still trying to prove him wrong.

This is where I dive into unknown territory to some extent.  I am not a biblical scholar or a religious person by any strectch, so forgive me if I get some of this wrong.

Jacob and Esau were brothers.  Jacob was the pious brother while Esau was not.  When Rebekah and Jacob conspire to deceive Isaac and Jacob recieves Isaac’s blessings, Esau is angry and swears he’ll kill Jacob.

Let’s assume that the man in black will be revealed in the final season to be Esau. What is the detente that the two of them have respected?  What is the “loophole”?  Is the rule by which Esau is unable to murder Jacob similar to the accord between Ben and Whitmore?  When the smoke monster spoke to Ben, was it Esau who commanded Ben to follow Locke’s every word?  Is Esau the smoke monster? Did he kill Mr. Eko as a surrogate for his brother?  Eko was, after all, now a pious man.

Are all the “visions” of the dead and or disappeared actually manifestations of Esau?  Was it Esau who had kept Jacob locked in the cabin with the ring of ash to contain him?

If you view Jacob and Esau as somehow temporally unrestrained, they could be anywhere or anything.  Jacob can clearly raise the dead with a touch of his hand, as he did with John. Can they assume other forms or be omnipresent?

Using the construct of Jacob and Esau, you could easily begin to make sense of many occurrences on the island.  Just about everything that has happened and every vision could be explained away with these two playing an odd cat and mouse game to “test” humanity.

As they meet on the beach at the beginning of the finale, Esau says to Jacob, “It always ends the same.” It is clear that they have done all of this before.  Did the crew of the Black Rock - like Danielle’s Party - come to distrust one another and kill each other off?  Are “The Others” the sole survivors of each such iteration of the cycle of violence?  Did they band together realizing that they were somehow a part of the island now?  Did Whitmore come to the island as a soldier with the Jughead crew? Ben was the sole survivor of Dharma? Was that the common characteristic The Others shared at the beginning?

And what of Richard Alpert?  Did he come to the island aboard the Black Rock?  Or further back?

I can see a clear scenario where an island with abundant resources and strange healing powers would be paradise.  But to borrow from The Matrix:

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe, that as a species, human beings define their reality though misery and suffering.

Perhaps the two brothers are running some sort of test to determine whether people can simply live together in paradise or whether they will, eventually, devolve into tribes and attack one another.  Is the story of Lost simply a karmic test based on The Lord of the Flies?  Could be.