Quickthink

What an odd question. Trapped in the here and now? How could we be trapped if modern society provides us with so much of what we want in life?

And yet … the question is not without interest. Being provided for is nice, but prisoners receive provisions too … at least prisoners trapped in golden cages. We could well be trapped and happily so if there is no need to explore the perimeters of our confinement.

Ah … how to do that? If you have a hankering for exploration, check out these two videos by Simon Schama.

The first is his treatment of Mr. David, the heroic propogandist of the French revolution and then Napoleon.  I was stunned by one aspect of the presentation. How easily David gave over his identity to a cause — regardless of its morality. He could not resist the urge to amplify messages that he did not try to understand. And then in the moment of truth when his role came into focus, he slunk into the shadows claiming that he was no more than a mere artist. Repulsive, I would say. But repulsive or not, certainly trapped by the need to be swept up in something larger than himself.

Then watch Schama’s treatment of Mark Rothko. Rothko did not pretend to understand what was transpiring around him. But he insisted on the honesty of his feeling for color in shaping human imagination. He stepped back from the trap of gorging on the moment (something Picasso would never have dreamed of) in favor of a glimpse of eternity. He wanted to create an experience that offers us an escape from the here and now.

So which artistic pose is heroic after all? I leave you to judge.

FOLLOW -  Adventures often start off with an escape from the here and now. Either things fall apart or what was lovely suddenly tortures. Either way, there is no choice but to leave home. “Wild” is a story based on the former and the heroine is a woman who decides to just walk away from her lonely life. Dwight Garner cried while reading it.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been tracking the great freemium story for some time. This is a quick update.

It all started when web service providers realized that by attracting huge amounts of traffic to their sites, they could monetize their services — other than by charging user fees. Think Google. This prompted a great deal of experiment with giving way services to get traffic. Think Facebook and Twitter et al. This led to interest in the social aspect of digital exchanges of content.  It also caused no small amount of panic among traditional content providers who just wanted just to transplant their old business models onto their web presence. Think New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

What to do? Paywalls were the most obvious answer. And after they started popping up, there was an interesting debate about the differences between hard and soft paywalls. But by now, one thing is clear. Paywalls don’t bring in that much cash.

So we are still groping around for a new model. Matt Ingram writes about one at Giga — the so called velvet rope model. This thought caught my eye

(one should) think of the relationship with readers as being about more than just money, and then let the monetization flow out of that relationship, rather than the reverse

Let monetization flow from a relationship? Build incentives for participation rather than just consuming content? Outrageous! But it seems to be working.

FOLLOW -  If this is the starting point for generating revenue on the web, then of course cutting down on piracy is irrelevant. You can cut it down, but it won’t generate more online sales. And surprise, surprise, that is the result so far from the three strikes law in France.

Corporate story lines can get complicated. For example, what does the PR department say when it comes out that Coca-Cola is part of a conservative lobby group that promotes freedom to own guns, privatization of prisons, and so on? What do guns and prisons  have to do with selling soda? And what about Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, who recently started making political speeches.  What does politics have to do with selling frappaccinos? The answer is nothing at all.  So why do corporate actors play politics?

Good question.  One reason is that they get away with it. They have the money to waste, a certain gravitas, and no one complains too much. Another reason is ego. Just like the bad old days when blue blooded idiots thought they knew better how the great unwashed should live and die, wealthy corporate executives think they know better how the rest of us should think.

I don’t know about you, but I find this to be offensive. Politics is about us, not about others informing us who we are (i.e. a branding game). And the fact that someone is pretty good at selling soda or coffee or pizza or can do leveraged buyouts is irrelevant to their ability to understand my life.  Let these folks join the political fray as equals, not as privileged actors with insider status, making silly claims of expertise that they don’t have.

What is really at issue here? The problem is that so far, we have tended to accept this as normal. We tend to accept the corporate voice as an authentic political voice. I find this to be very strange.

FOLLOW -  BTW, I singled out Coca-Cola but it is not alone. Other well known brands are also members of the above group and you could ask the same question about them.

2d FOLLOW -  Simon Schama talks about the danger that we live with now with the politics of governance debased (in part by the corporate message). He makes the good point that not all of the blame for stunting political debate lies with the right. The arrogance of the left opened the door back in the 1970’s. I agree. It was a side effect of the Vietnam war. As Schama notes, the war brought down the great champion of governance (Johnson). It also radicalized the rhetoric of the left, which opened the door to the odd idea that the champions of governance — the left — could not be trusted to govern. Nixon planted the idea in his victory in 1972 over McGovern (mainly because of McGovern’s opposition to the war). Reagan resurrected it as a more general theme (markets know better) and now it has morphed into an ideology that government cannot be trusted at all. One must “starve the beast”. Of course, this creates an excellent opportunity for corporations to assert their interests and they do. Indeed, as we can see from the above, they go far beyond assertions of their immediate interests. What fun!

3rd FOLLOW -  Mark Bittman offers a nice illustration of how corporate interests are preventing better regulation of advertising junk food to kids - despite the rather sad fact tht 17% of American kids are obese and many more are nearly so.