dataesthetic.org

The primacy of information in all aspects of life requires a new understanding of aesthetic values.  The nature and scale of this change, from an industrial to information driven world, has deep implications, already reflected in visual design.  New realities have transformed aesthetic systems, so it’s useful to consider a dataesthetic perspective.

Form and function follow information.  Information easily accommodates both as variables, but neither exist without data.  Data drives all functionality: from cars to George Foreman grills. Information’s value today is reflected in its price… it’s so expensive that it’s frequently marketed with cheap/free hardware (think cell phones)!  Many households spend more on cable tv and telephones (including cell lines) than any perishable other than groceries!

Modularity of data implies modular functionality as well as form. Cut/paste/copy.  Fold/spindle/mutilate.  This is the most common technique and feature of new media.  New media characteristics implied: numeric core, modularity, variability, automation, and transcoding.  Modularity is a cardinal virtue of digital media objects, but may be even more important for tools.  Modular design is efficient, taking less time to deliver, or reserving more time to address aesthetic balance.

The screen is primary in a windowed reality, where any surface can be the canvas (tactile,electronic, ink, paint; all can be digitally applied to any facade). Screen and type size, shape, color and placement are ideally determined by the data. A screen is ideally a collection of scalable, modular elements, referenced as fields in relational databases that can be transcoded in whole or in part to any application.

More from less.  Information density is so great that individuals cannot possibly manage it in any direct, unmediated manner.  The best designs deliver the most information in the shortest amount of time (time being a cardinal value).  Authors aim to distill a narrative or conceptual framework into a database with a scalable delivery vehicle.  Compiling and delivering many (dissociated) separate works in a unified, harmonious package is a design task requiring balance and harmony.  Collaboration can be ad-hoc or even oppositional!

Binary relationships and hierarchical menus reflect the native structure of our tools (databases and file structures).  Design must harmonize our need for play, desire for balance with the nature of our tools to make the best of both, and offset the worst aspects of each.

Discrete channels of communication expand understanding. Just as one cannot experience music or art through words, one cannot capture the richness of life with video or pictures alone.  The ready ability to manipulate reality in sophisticated, and cheap, ways require very rich mediated interactions to feel satisfying or remotely comfortable.

Mass-customization of information delivery and display maximizes attention, understanding and data density.  Dataesthetic design considers the user’s identity and goals, in relation to the content and previous users, to determine how and what data will be presented.

If 9/11/2001 was the catalyst for the end-game of Western Civilization, 11/2/2006 could arguably be considered the tipping point, when the transformation became both obvious and inevitable.  For the first time in a generation, political spending on television had little to no impact on electoral results.  The masses couldn’t be scared, intimidated, or lied into submission by a ruling party with nothing else to sell.  People didn’t suddenly become wiser, or more media literate.  Rather, in 2004, most citizens took control of their own media.  iPods subverted talk radio and satellite news broadcasts by directly providing more entertaining options.  Campaign ads went unseen and unheeded thanks to TiVo and DVR.  Finally, viral messages were spread over the web, with Google reinforcing meme’s through search ranking, while personal networks spread deeper ideas.  DVDs like “An Inconvenient Truth”, aggregators like iTunes Store and YouTube, and info-networks like History Channel, Discovery, Current, and even PBS can focus deeply on single issues, and present more complex pictures of issues from multiple perspectives.  These threads become self-reinforcing, and once a candidate or issue campaign crosses their boundaries, their positions on other issues are either reinforced or invalidated by association.  The depth and cross-party acceptance of these new forms make them difficult to counter.  As always, time works against the target: John Kerry couldn’t use the megaphone of a major party campaign to deflect entirely scurrilous viral charges in time before the election.  Conversely, no real charge (neither competence nor corruption) was large enough to counter the fear meme cultivated by the Bush campaign, which short-circuited rationality.  In 2006 the fear meme was weaker with time, but more significantly, the competence meme was inescapably real.  No stirring or scary ad could nick a deep, obvious, pervasive conclusion.  This conclusion was reached not through the major media, but through micromedia.

Single issue blogs churn and regurgitate the message, refreshed by databases with the most up-to-date evidence stoking the flames.  Research once, re-search (google) automagically over and over to reinforce.  The Bush administration has tried to stem the tide by re-indexing, re-sorting, and re-arranging every measure of social, economic and military progress historically available to us!  By redefining the terms of every argument, they’ve sought to reframe every debate by obscuring the results of their policies.  When it was clear they were losing the war on terror badly, they first stopped reporting attacks, and then changed all the definitions so historical benchmarks couldn’t be applied.  When it was obvious their tax cuts weren’t helping revenue, they changed accounting standards.  From the 2000 election results onward, the Bush administration has skillfully manipulated statistical measures to the benefit of their policies, even those most clearly failures.  The modern Republican Party has dominated recent politics through their control of the debate.  Every argument is framed in their terms, then parsed interchangeably as cold, economic necessity, or unarguable religious conviction.  This deliberate strategy was impossible to derail as long as people were passive recipients of pre-digested information.  It failed in 2006 because people have become active participants in an on-going debate with a common, open set of terms.

This shift is radical because in many respects, it throws the baby out with the bathwater.  We not only reject Dick Cheney’s unchanging, nonsensical mantras, we no longer see Bill O’Rielly, George Stephanpoulus, and Tim Russert as fair brokers of information.  Fox News personalities are tinted by Fox News itself, which is tinted by Republican policy and politics.  CBS and PBS are tinted a different, but equally recognizable hue.  Consequently we grow up aware of the shading, and take it into account.  We avoid it all, but we most actively avoid oppositional perspectives.  Obviously, if you’re mad at Republicans, you will not bother listening to their attack ads aimed at Democrats, or vice versa.  But chances are, if you have a DVR, you won’t bother with any attack ads at all.

Given what we know about the needs of artists, the demands of the market, and the nature of our networked society, we can easily imagine deals that work to the mutual benefit of all involved, fairly compensating everyone for their contributions in a timely and appropriate manner.  Other disciplines and industries have found great profit and success selling very similar products to music recordings.  Awareness of those models, and the specific sales channels used suggest shortcuts in our endeavors.

Forget Winners, just Avoid Losers.

Labels cannot pick winners, but they can avoid losers through common sense and conventional business metrics.  Given that recording is so affordable, many (most?) artists are capable and even willing to shop finished products, or at very least, preliminary mixes of finished recordings.  Bird in the hand!  A band’s merch table, previous album sales, and work ethic are evident, on display at every show (if not, a deficiency or need are apparent).  Poor work-ethic need not eliminate a band from consideration, or relegate them to losers status.  All shortcomings can be addressed in a systematic way, and associated costs can be factored into the larger equation.  Signing the worlds most disorganized, and dysfunctional band to a deal can be a no-brainer: Other variables, like the band’s drawing power and fan base, license appeal of the artist or music, or even touring patterns or circuit suggest solutions.  Again, recognizing markets and niches when you see them, and balancing demand with supply and availability of product to those markets are the key.

Shop and Buy Projects, Not Artists.  And… never invest in “Talent”!

Multirecord deals are sucker bets without winners in today’s market.  The label execs that sign artists to the deals rarely survive the contract, so a new team is saddled with someone else’s vision.  The results of such arrangements is a predictable failure.  The old studio system of the movie world and major sports leagues worked like modern labels, in that “stars” were signed to long term deals, based on past performance and some imagined future potential.  This is a numbers game at best, so the only way to prosper is with tricky legal deals and heavy handed contracts, reinforced by monopolistic market structure.  While the marketing of a project is by definition a collaborative, team effort, the team is assembled through a vicious, adversarial process, and marketing is often disrupted by team owners juggling the lineups and key players on a whim.

Modern movies are marketed alone or in packages, with studios operating mostly as the ultimate middlemen, connecting disparate groups of independent operators.  While they maintain lots and staff, movies are increasingly made by freelance specialists, each refining a slice of the craft to attract future projects.  Making and maintaining these connections is a full time job.  Producers and marketers of movie properties sell shares of production like stocks or bonds.  The more credible and advanced the concept, the greater the value of the shares.  This model can be easily applied to the business of record making.

Modular Labels & Scaler Deals.

In the age of mass-customization, one size never fits all in anything.  Even in conventional labels, every deal is unique, however a consistent and modular structure can be much more fair and profitable for artist and label alike.  There is a fixed menu of services available for every record, each with an associated cost.  Some services are inappropriate or unnecessary for projects of a certain size, or in a particular market (for instance, live recordings of jam bands are useful products, but not so much for crooners and torch singers).

Given this reality, not only must we scale deals to match the needs of each project (as distinct from the artist), but we must be prepared to scale the label and possibly the artist as well!  Everyone can make money off of a record that sells only 5000 copies, provided expenses are controlled and marketing is done with consideration of scale.  It makes no more sense to mass-market a niche product than it does to bury a solid pop record in a sea of indie shoe-gazing.  The appeal of an album or artist is not unknowable: how crowds respond, and how previous releases are sold tell you all you need to know to break even.

Every band’s needs are different.  As creative capabilities converge, it’s increasingly normal for bands to find natural, local partners to take care of needs. Go with that flow.

Realizing Value Without Control

Risk and reward are hard to balance on speculative ventures like music.  While no one can know whether any record will be a hit, any record can break even.  But, the key is controlling costs, not people.  This is accomplished by scaling the entire project.  Control of people is always tricky, and rarely positive for both sides.  People make deals with the best of intentions, and expect success, or deals would not be made.  The roots of conflict are control: broad contracts that seek to protect parties from one another require mechanisms of control, intimidation and interference.  When signed it’s assumed these are constructive forces, but that’s not really possible to assure, and rarely realized in practice.  All the control necessary for an album project is possession of physical product and masters, along with the assigned right to collect and disburse profits of digital sales.

A work-for-hire model allows creative and technical contributors to a project to be fairly compensated for actual work.  Negotiating discounts for work performed, or arguing over imaginary “points” for sales that have not happened is not the only solution, just a status quo that benefits no one, and limit the success of projects.  Start with a fair market rate for every service provided.  Forget the discounts, throw away the points.  Insert a simple risk-compensation mechanism in their place.  The sooner one is paid their fair market rate, the less they are owed.  As time passes, the cost of those services accrues interest at a fixed, known pace.  No tricky accounting gimmicks, no points.  Pay now, or pay later, it’s always the artists choice.

The choice extends far beyond production personnel, to the label itself.  The artist may buy-back all inventory, and repurchase rights at any time.  Again, the rate is set up front, and is always known.  If another label has a better deal, both label and artist are protected.  The label gets it’s original investment returned in full, with a fair profit for their effort.  The artist is always free to take better deals.

To prevent artists from leaving, the deal should get sweeter with success.  As work-for-hire is paid off, profit for artist and label increases.  The label has a strong incentive to maintain a fair, competitive margin.  If the margin is too low, the label’s ability to sell product is hindered.  Too high and the other offers look competitive.

Inventory is a challenge.  One must press enough to create, then meet the demands of unexpected success, yet anything over that is a waste.   Fortunately, once the basic manufacturing parts have been created for a release (masters, label art, film etc), turnaround time is quite short. These days discs can be drop-shipped to retailers from the plant, and turnaround is generally less than 2 weeks!  Still, the initial order quantity is critical.  Too many or too few copies when you need them are equally problematic.

There are several factors that can establish a baseline for sales, with minimal consideration to quality of music, production and packaging.  An established artist or band will generally be able to sell a consistent number of copies for each title they release, using the same approach.  This number can be used as a starting point for an initial order.  It’s not smart to add pre-orders and other anticipated windfalls to the original quantity.  There’s no real benefit to maintaining a large inventory, and significant risk.  The more novel the niche, the less dependable it is as a revenue stream.

With bands, the benefits of experience and longevity are offset by the risk of break-up.  The longer a group has been together, the less time you have until they break up!  This risk is minimized in several ways.  Having a finished master, or at least a set of final mixes to evaluate is more important with established bands, since this provides a context for the new work, and some means to predict sales.  Younger bands have less of a track record, but often more buzz, which can be leveraged and enhanced within a project.  By enabling these groups to get the most out of their budgets, and setting modest sales goals they can make products they’re  proud to sell, and take advantage of the expertise of those around them.  In short, good habits can be set for a career, through enlightened self-interest and opportunity.  The risk with younger bands is that they can be easily discouraged, or worse, distracted by major label leeches offering bad deals with greater ego appeal.

Point-Of-Purchase Accounting

Starbucks, CD Baby and iTunes are modern sales models.  Best Buy, Sam Goody, Tower, et al represent a backwards approach to an otherwise soluble problem.  New models treat records like other retail goods, purchased to be sold.  Old models treat them as a tease, to be ordered and returned, greatly complicating accounting and minimizing every artists exposure to their true fans.  Modern models use technology to modulate cost directly with demand.  Archaic models attempt to predict and manipulate entire markets.  They can do this because, unlike modern outlets, the old school is built on the industrial model: they make money selling identical, cookie-cutter copies of a single property to millions of people.  This spam-the-market approach is anachronistic.  Leveraging scarcity in a world of plenty is not a winning formula.  Identifying niches, and selling music products as special and unique makes far more sense.

Starbuck’s is one of the largest retail sellers of music.  Their markup is absurdly high, relative to the competition, and their selection is extremely limited, in other words, the opposite of Wal-Mart’s music formula (every milk toast artist who ever put out a record, at the cheapest possible price).  No doubt Wal-Mart has made billions for the labels, as the McDonald’s of the music industry (clean restrooms assured!).  But Starbucks has made dozens of artists by knowing their own customers and introducing them to new and old sounds that match their tastes.  Wal-Mart will never break a new artist, but worse, they will never offer a fair profit for the most established and hottest artists.  Through accounting tricks, stiff-arm negotiation, and inattention, the margins for these sales are barely worth the trouble to artists (although labels can and do profit by their association).

iTune’s is another example of a highly profitable, artist-building model, that is resisted by labels, who have poisoned their artists minds with collective attorney-think.  iTunes is unfriendly to middlemen and margin-feeders because there’s no inventory, no costs, no deal to cut or physical product to move around and mark up. Put a song in one end of iTunes music store, all that comes out are profits to be divided.  By contrast, every major label alternative is a black hole: Subscriptions only seem like a great deal, until you ask how you get paid.  Fractional pennies (or no pennies at all, for younger artists) don’t compare to the better part of a dollar, and a persistent connection to a fan.  Compared to the iTunes store, Napster, MusicMatch and every major label driven online initiative is a cheesy, old time scam.

Clearly modern labels have many new avenues to sell records and help artists develop artistically and professionally.  By starting with a project-based focus, rather than multi-record deals, the modern label removes a lot of incentive for artistic meddling.  The New Deal encourages everyone involved to work every angle by directly linking compensation to success.  The only metric for success is unit sales.  Every pressed disc and every download represents real money.  The modern label’s primary mission is to centralize inventory and collection, and clearly communicate an honest accounting to all parties.  The label must be the honest broker of information, and seller of discs.  Upon demand, every party to the deal has a right to know where the product is, what has been sold, and what remains.

We suggest a new, unique feature for this Point of Purchase accounting model: An implicit buy out is available to every party in the deal, in the form of actual product.  For instance, a major label might wish to sign an artist, and acquire license to a catalog item under The New Deal.  In the bad old days, this simple, sometimes reasonable request often initiated legal battles, and crippled artist, label and catalog alike!  The New Deal would allow artists to purchase unsold inventory at a pre-agreed cost-based price.  The longer that inventory sits unsold, the higher the ultimate buyout price, which grows at a fixed rate, acting as interest to modulate risk and provide reward to everyone concerned.

Just because there are no smart, modern recording labels, doesn’t mean we don’t know what one looks like.  First and foremost, a successful label requires expertise in selling music, and some objective means of connecting artists to fans.  To this end, the label must know who the leaders are in every aspect of retail sales, including unconventional channels.  Just as important, labels must have some expertise in recognizing demand across many markets, including niches.  Demand is distinct from talent, just as retail awareness is different from distribution.

Reconstructing the Label

Traditional labels are like prospectors or sports franchises.  Their model requires them to pick “winners” and encourages them to dump “losers”.  Contracts are based on the (false) assumption that the labels deliver some sort of economy of scale, and technical know-how when it comes to marketing music.  They sign artists to deals that include investment for development, not only of product but artists themselves.  But they cannot actually pick, breed or train “stars”, and in practice, the culture and history of the business almost precludes any sort of useful development.  The concept of “the sophomore jinx” is a monument to the success of major label A&R.  The problems with this model are manifold and should be obvious to all, if only in the results: Every major has historically failed to develop artists, and all profits are based on continuously churning catalogs of known, proven “hits”, usually acquired through dumb luck or licensing.  Fortunately, one doesn’t have to deconstruct this mangled monster to see a better way.

Labels cannot pick winners and losers, but in a modular culture, anyone can recognize and respond to demand.  Demand for products is linked to market niches and events, all of which are easily sortable by the databases driving our life.  For instance, the sudden success of a local professional sports franchise creates predictable demand for merchandise of all sorts.  That demand is broad-based, and not necessarily limited by official license channels.  In the past, selling novelty singles and LPs in traditional music marketing chains has been a disaster: Returns tend to swamp sales, and devour most of the investment.  Today a savvy label is selling the identical product in non-traditional venues (Starbucks, iTunes, supermarket checkout impulse buy), but with virtually no risk of return!  Similarly, custom CD’s may be produced under license to be sold or given away as hand outs by lifestyle retailers; these deals are closed-ended and flat rate license, so there is virtually no risk, and known reward.

Every new media is resisted by the established “old” media.  When old business models begin to fail, the law or precedent is used to manipulate and control new ones.  While underlying concepts of intellectual property, and the basic constitutional framework our laws are based upon are as relevant as ever, money and the unenlightened self-interests of oligarchies distort (recontextualize) the law.  The result: A broken system, founded on archaic models, that truly benefits no one.

Lets start from the beginning.  Record labels sprang from the sheet music and publishing world.  Live concerts and pop music are equally rooted in the traveling carnival game.  “Billboard” magazine was originally a carny-trade rag, that evolved from the larger touring industry to refocus on music!  The music business was built on intellectual property, first in the printed form, and later as recordings.  Publishers, later augmented (but not replaced by) recording companies dominated the trade.  When it was a print-based industry, the business model looked like what we might call “the long tail”: Publishers controlled broad catalogs, selling low volumes to many markets.  But with industrialization, and the appearance of a manufactured music product that required no specialized skill to enjoy, that model evolved to a “hit-driven” game, best fueled by “stars”.  Technologically driven companies like RCA were highly vertically integrated: they made everything from the tubes that went into radios and transmitters, but the stations and programming thereon.  Re-selling their assets as recorded music leveraged that investment tremendously.  Over time both recording and delivery media have become more capable, and less limited.  Virtually any idea or content fits on a DVD, if not a CD.  Tools of creation, and appliances for consumption are ubiquitous.  The gap between artist and audience has been under assault for a century.  From a technical standpoint, there is very little reason for any gap at all.  What remains is a product of business model, fear, and habit.

All of this is not to say that there is no longer a need for a record label.  Quite the opposite: Every artist needs a label more than ever, to provide support of the most conventional kind!  Artists no longer need a label to fund recordings, or shape their repertoire, but they need more help than ever breaking through the noise, organizing marketing and distribution.  There’s real money to be made in a label that focuses like a laser beam on aquiring long-tail catalogs and delivering highly customized products in all formats, manufactured on demand.  The problem is, that label doesn’t exist!

It’s crucial to understand that everything that happens in a dataesthetically designed space is potentially content.  Every user’s click, every author’s decision may have value at some future point in time.  Therefore, care must be taken to collect and categorize data as it’s generated, to facilitate that future use.  This doesn’t mean this data must be used, or even available online.  Just that it’s collection cannot be ignored simply because it’s not understood.  Site logs are therefore potentially valuable tools, that must be saved offline for future use and retroactive study.

In daily life, there are many opportunities to collect and organize information on an ad hoc basis.  Site notes of authors are an under-used, but potentially rich means of storing data, and building a cultural memory into sites that can save artists and designers countless hours of circular work.  The notes sections of Powerpoint and Keynote documents provide similar opportunity.  Web-driven calendaring provides a means of communicating and scheduling human and local resources from any physical location.  Calendar’s with unlimited text fields are searchable databases, and with controlled access, can be good journaling tools, from which more developed content can be extracted, automatically or editorially.  Fully utilizing these simple, powerful tools in a functional way (doing business from one’s website) is a way to generate content, and build interest as well as community around an activity or site.

There is no conflict or competition between Yahoo Groups, MSN Communities, professional Ebay’ers, and Amazon reviewers.  In fact, these self-referential groups are no different from conventional regional or localized markets.  Successful designers consider each culture individually, and create sites in each community that appeals directly to the locals, drawing from a common database of content.  There is no superior community, only superior focus of content.  Designing to the audience is important.  The best solutions identify users through their actions relative to the forum or point of entry, and actively present appealing content.  Using multiple channels only helps if the content is desirable or interesting, so it’s critical to pay attention, and take every opportunity to learn about users, starting with the culture and slant of the point of entry.  Their path through information, reactions to content, not to mention direct feedback help categorize users and improve our content.

Conclusion: User’s actions themselves are important data, and potentially the basis for future content.  Given the value of information, it cannot be ignored, and the best designs consider it’s application.

Sites only get repeat visits with fresh content.  Not just any fresh content, but GREAT content.  Many bands already have a leg up: some have interesting but modestly recorded songs that aren’t really album worthy, but can be offered periodically as gifts to attract users (at strategic times).  Likewise, most rock shows are a terrific opportunity to build relationships, and make connections.  Encouraging fans to sign up for mail lists has been a standard fixture of the music business for decades.  Asking for email addresses has been common since the mid 90s.  Today bands link to fans more flexibly and in real time via AOL Instant Messenger.  The most aware bands already use Friendster and networking opportunities afforded through online communities.  It’s critical to recognize that the value of a new tool rarely surpasses or supercedes all older ones, and here the opposite is the case: in an information economy, the more channels we use, the more effectively we deliver our message.  Layers and density are good.  Guided by knowledge and supported by networks, we can begin to realize a new depth in our connections and relationships not only with fans, but with clients and partners as well.

The most critical step is generating content.  Lots of images, sounds, and of course, text.  That the diarrheic stream of the blog manages to draw interest shows the depth of the failure of mass media to address the complexities of modern life.  The relatively tiny audiences allow marketers to ignore the format, and limit it’s ultimate appeal.  Adapting the strengths of the blog,we can create sites that are continuously focused and freshened by use, and respond adaptively to a user’s interests, without seeming rigid or obtuse.  Blogging or site management software is very good at collecting and disseminating information.  It encourages commentary, and can create pages flexibly.  On the downside, its generally driven by date or popularity, which means that over time as things become explored and fleshed out, they become buried.  New users are unaware of existing canon, so various religious wars are endlessly rehashed, even though all parties have spoken their minds.  Repeatedly.  Cyclically.

We can start with a blog or site management system, but hack its dynamic behavior to be more user-sensitive.  Putting the canon front and center for new users lets them in on the party.  Hiding it from the old war horses keeps them from getting sucked into a frustrating black hole.  Secondarily, commentary isn’t always a good thing, but feedback is always valuable.  How we apply that feedback is more complex: Amazon.com’s solution to this problem is valuable and instructive.  Amazon excels at identifying user interests, and presenting them with products that appeal uniquely to them.  This is the opposite of the grocery-store checkout mass-market approach more commonly applied by retailers.  The concept of sale relies on an underlying unmet need or desire of a customer.  If one doesn’t need the sale item, the price has no appeal.  On the other hand, an attractive price on a needed or wanted item can be irresistible.  We learn of a visitor’s interests through his actions.  Over time, we learn not only what features and attractions are appealing to the mass of visitors, but we also learn many things about our visitors as groups.  These behaviors can suggest organization, and form matrices that first identify a user’s potential relationship to existing users, and then reflects and shares the interesting features among like individuals.  This is a dataesthetic approach to dynamic page display.

Since the turn of the 21st Century, the text journal, or “web-log” foreshortened to ‘blog, has been a popular format for discussion and even dissemination of news!  Aside from the novelty and joy of knowing 40 other people recognize your handle, the phenomenon differs little in substance from the long-established “vanity press”.  It’s difference in tone, a degree of significance impossible for a self-published author, is found in it’s availability: Successful googling is a measure of value.

Over the short term it’s given rise to a new genre of celebrity, actively defining their own fifteen minutes of fame.  Longer term, as google is filled with hundreds, then thousands, then millions of other bloggers and their commentators, this effect will weaken.  A different kind of hook is needed to remain relevant to Minute 16 and beyond.  In an information economy, any sort of notoriety has value, so this is no small thing.

Study the differences between the best blogs and the best webzines.  Plastic and Salon speak to similar audiences with a strong voice.  How are they similar?  How do they differ?

The critical distinction between blogs and ‘zines is that blogs are a medium of the moment.  Action/reaction.  Any periodical is reflective to the extent of the deadline.  A daily deadline, with no boss or editorial control certainly generates content, but quality suffers for all but the most talented writers.  Practice tends not to make perfect, but lazy.  Blogs can evolve by becoming less time and popularity driven, and more info-driven with a tight focus on user interest.

It must be understood that users can contribute in many ways, including by lurking in intelligent web spaces.  Artists, writers and creators must devise frameworks that encourage all kinds of participation, including subversively responding to attackers (snoopers, trolls, people with too much time).  Dataesthetically powerful design seeks and acquires information about fans and attackers alike, and uses it openly to discourage attacks, and better expose the information driving the site.  The information itself is the product, and all response is crucial to shaping it.

Not surprisingly the common domains around the term “micromedia” are occupied by microscopic entities unrelated to media in the conventional sense.  Still the concept behind the phrase remains valid: one key to developing the info-economy is development of laser-focused media outlets where the content, the specific information, is the magnet.  Micromedia leverage visibility and access to create a sense of belonging or community, and as people are attracted and become active, the importance of that community grows.  Think of BBS’s, and Usenet Newsgroups, which have evolved to become Yahoo Groups and other aggregated virtual communities, ever more tiny.

As people participate, a sense of community builds.  With it comes  a sense that this micro-market is larger and more significant than it is.  The fact that 100 people share an interest, across a planet of 5,000,000,000, seems remarkable or at least validating! In fact it’s a new form of tribal organization.  But while people previously joined tribes through birth or ritual, modern tribes organize purely around interests.  The more intense the interest, the more exclusive the tribe, the closer the bonds.

These bonds are as real and tangible as everything else in the infosphere.  It is a mistake to discount online relationships, communities or personas: we can address each of these entities on all traditional levels of human experience.  We can form friendships, companies, clubs, and schools, or any other sort of format as easily in the virtual world as the real one.  E-commerce is as viable as bricks and mortar, and in fact may be more efficient, safe and healthy.  Dismissing or ignoring the organization of the virtual world eliminates opportunities in the physical one.

On a social level, its worth considering how the virtual world might enrich and expand the lives of shut-ins, the elderly, and the handicap.  The networked information economy provides equal access to many people who had previously been excluded.  Not only does it create employment opportunity for individuals, it creates new markets for assistive devices, products, as well as an efficient way to coordinate and deliver aid to all kinds of people.  Exploiting the potential of many-to-many networks is a central goal of dataesthetic design.

Lets start with the obvious, easy changes afforded by a wired economy.  Many people have no reason to perform their job from a desk at headquarters.  Phone and cable service costs less to your home than your desk at work.  Most people already have one or both, and would be happy to pass on those savings to an employer willing to pay the bill, and see the cheap, fat lines as a tangible benefit.  The company could then stop worrying about many modern office problems: phones congested with personal traffic, data lines jammed with spam and employee web-surfing (most people only visit complex sites from fast work connections!), not to mention facility data security, physical liability insurance and all the fixed costs of providing space for employees.

The grail of staffing flexibility has led many companies to rely on outside employment and temp agencies to lock experienced workers into non-permanent jobs with lower wages and benefits than permanent employees doing the same job.  Ironically the companies often pay more per hour for these workers than it costs to hire them directly.  The freedom to downsize without layoffs can hide bad news that might disrupt stock prices or sales.  Minimizing tradition and corporate memory allows companies to change direction with less resistance.  Add in real savings in human resource costs (training, severance issues, union conflicts), and couple that with the elimination of benefits whose costs cannot be controlled, and the attraction is obvious.  Even if it costs more today, contracting for workers makes sense for many companies over the long term under conventional terms of employment.  Over time the basic concept of employment inevitably changes in fundamental ways.

Aside from tradition and the top-down paradigm of industrial culture, our approach to compensation locks us into this inefficient, expensive model.  Rather than benefitting from US investment in networks, corporations move to apply the old models in new places.  We pass up tangible economic benefits for the security of a familiar but flawed system.  Bosses can’t imagine managing highly diffused staffs they rarely see face to face, and have a hard time believing worker-bees are capable of managing their own time.  Workers can’t imagine losing the security of a fixed, hour-based paycheck, and are unwilling to accept the risk implicit in being paid for outcomes rather than labor.  But it’s not hard to imagine a production-based system could benefit employers and employees, not to mention customers.  Paying people for work products, rather than time solves many problems.  Better workers will always earn more than less efficient peers.  Handicapped workers will find more opportunity if their pay is modulated with output.  Costs are more easily projected and controlled.

One underlying failure of our society at large is the way we treat compensation in general, and health benefits in particular.  Specifically, by treating health care as a benefit of one’s job dodges the economic reality where hospitals are obligated to provide expensive treatment for all, regardless of ability to pay.  The system encourages two negative behaviors: some corporations use benefits as lure and trap for employees, giving the biggest and most powerful companies (yet another) significant edge in attracting the best prospects, and it encourages the worst companies to provide nothing it all.  This system allows insurers to rate and cherry pick among risks, and to raise rates endlessly to enhance the apparent value of these “benefits” and more tightly bind employees to the employers holding the best group plans.  The voluntary payment of unregulated premiums keeps the government free and clear of the carnage.  Everyone wins except the co-paying hostages.

A leap of faith is required on both sides of the problem.  In the US, voters can be confidently insistent on reform.  Moving to an information-driven age of plenty requires an enormous investment, some of which has come from government, but much of which must come from corporations.  Health care is a fundamental, if unacknowledged right, and the system’s refusal to acknowledge this is the root of the problem.  Linking health care to employment is as irrational as it is unfair.  To be clear, the basic premiums should be withheld from wages, and matched by employers, just like social security but paid from regulated entities that promise to accept premiums from all applicants. It’s not unreasonable to expect corporations to benefit (profit) from that investment of public interest and regulation: costs will be controlled, and the burden shared.  We should promote new kinds of relationships and markets for jobs around networks that are virtual and physical.  As we recognize and accept that this rising tide lifts all boats, corporations must be patient, and resist the temptation to predation during bubbles and short term distortions of markets.  An active, informed electorate can diminish or negate the effects of political payola.  Enlightened corporations can grow markets (much as Ford did in heavy-handed, ham-fisted way along with the success of the Model T).  Together these forces can help us open new opportunities.

These specific benefits could have enormous benefits on the global economy. Everyone in our society pays more for everything because these costs are so high.  The positive changes facilitated by network economies work on many levels.  Reducing the number of office commuters not only saves the employee car expenses, and the company data and phone costs.  It also lowers the number of cars on the road, reducing congestion, wear and tear on roads, air pollution, and lowers actuarial risk in medicine, accidents and crime by reducing the employee’s exposure.  Fewer resources will be needed to install, operate and maintain separate phone lines to every desk, cube, and employee in an operation, and the infrastructure is on-demand and as-needed.  Eliminating travel and parking expenses and eating at home means employees consume less of their money.  As our economy fully shifts to information-basis, the real cost of living goes down.  This controls wages, and stabilizes the broader economy, by enabling everyone to devote more time and energy to personal or social pursuits.