Reports from the media measurement company Nielsen have dropped one of the features with which the company is arguably most associated: the idea of a television ‘channel’. MediaPost reports:

Nielsen said it had dropped one of its most popular features — data showing how many channels the average TV household receives — because in a digital, time-shifted multichannel universe, there no longer is a “consistent” meaning for the term “channel.”

People watch their television time-shifted through DVRs, VCRs and VoD, through computer screens and smartphones, alongside other media such as their laptop screens and they flick with their remotes whenever the momentum drops. They still watch programmes, of course – and Nielsen’s data will measure those audiences. But they don’t tune in to channels anymore. The ‘how many channels’ statistic, which – as you’d imagine – showed an ever-widening number of choices, makes no sense in a world where to answer to that question is effectively ‘infinite’:

In 2008, the last year for which Nielsen reported the data, the average U.S. household had 130.1 TV channels available to it, but on average, “tuned” only 17.8 of them, according to Nielsen’s definition of channel tuning. That means that the average TV households was only watching about 14% of the channels they had available to them. The percentage of channels the average TV household tunes to had been declining over the years that Nielsen has been reporting that data.

Long Live the Channel

The last sentence there – ‘The percentage of channels the average TV household tunes to had been declining over the years that Nielsen has been reporting that data” – is pretty telling. Creating more opportunities to watch rubbish doesn’t mean that people will do so. Generally speaking, people only want to watch the good stuff, and that’s what has led the popularity of time-shifting and over-the-web television like Hulu and iPlayer. At any given moment, it’s entirely likely that there is ‘nothing’ on broadcast TV but ‘anything you want’ via other means.

That said, the BBC still accounts for 1/3 of the UK’s TV-viewing; it won 13 of the 23 television BAFTA awards last year, with multiple nominations in almost every category. The BBC iPlayer site gets more than 1.4mn visitors a day. Could it be possible that these statistics are related? That a channel that cares about quality and service delivery might actually still mean something as a channel? I think so.

Bruce Sterling “Shaping Things” (Lift09 France EN) from Lift Conference on Vimeo.

The video is of Bruce Sterling at the Lift conference last year, reflecting on his 2005 book Shaping Things. I’m going to summarise it, so if you haven’t got 22 minutes and a strong tolerance for poor audio editing, read on. It is about the Internet of Things, the idea and practise of giving objects in the physical world an Internet presence, through RFID tags, stickybits or somesuch.

One example is the Internet fridge that know when you’re running out of milk and orders some more. Another is Tower Bridge’s Twitter account. Proponents of this sort of technology imagine a future where everything is tagged – where you can Google your car keys to find out where you left them, or a clean pair of underpants. Shops could automatically charge you for the things you leave with, as you move through the scanner at the door. Theft becomes practically impossible since the location of objects is always trackable. Sterling coined the word ‘spime’ for these tagged, findable, identifiable objects – since they have co-ordinates in space and time.

In the video, he mainly talks about the ways in which his vision has gone awry or changed since he wrote the book.

Taxonomy – tagging or labelling things turns out to be trickier than it seems at first glance. This is the ‘magic word’ ontological problem. a) People disagree about the names of things — is it a bap, a barmcake or a bread roll? b) Our names for things change over time: e.g. ‘Web 2.0’ seems quite an old-fashioned expression now, just five years after its invention. c) There are numerous regional/demographic linguistic variations that actually describe semantic and psychological differences – seven words for snow in Inuit, that sort of thing. d) What about the components of the thing you are tagging – do they get tags too? And how deep do you go with that – if you started tagging a laptop, for example, where would you stop?

Ownership – tied with this is the problem of who does the tagging. Should it be the government and large corporations, as was the case with the implementation of barcodes? Or should these tags develop more democratically, a folksonomy, if you like? Naming is a form of ownership, so the latter may feel more politically acceptable, if not perhaps as well-organised.

Privacy and Tracking – Googling your car keys sounds like a cool idea, but what about if other people can do that? Who would you trust with that information and how could you control it? People are understandably anxious about revealing their location, the status of their underwear and so forth. Sterling suggests that there are ‘about a million bad ways’ to implement this sort of thing – and that we’ll probably try half a million of these before we find useful techniques.

Recycling – a possible big win for item-tagging is making us more aware of our waste, something towards which we tend to have something of a natural aversion. If we continue to ‘own’ the items we discard, it ought to make us more careful about their disposal and less likely to destroy the planet. However, we probably need to act a bit faster than this is likely to happen as a technology.

Sterling closes by remarking that these debates may just disappear as spimes become the norm. This seems likely to me, as uneasy as that makes me feel. We are very quick to change our social mores to take advantage of new technologies. I bought my first mobile phone ten years ago. Before that point, it was effectively impossible to make (or break) ad-hoc arrangements with friends that weren’t physically present. Now it is the norm, and we don’t think twice about it. The moral and social dilemmas surrounding this have simply become invisible.

Perhaps surprisingly, spimification is happening to people faster than it is happening to objects. Nearly all higher-end mobile phones today have an embedded GPS device and a unique identity code – its ESN – that connects it to you. The ones that don’t can still be located using cell tower triangulation. I would imagine that under some circumstances, probably more than we know, the authorities can use this as a Verichip (the chips people inject into their dogs – or children – so they can be found). The only difference between your phone and the ankle-bracelets they put on bailed prisoners is psychological.

That won’t be necessary in the future. The location status game Foursquare has more than three-quarters of a million members and allows you to voluntarily do this to yourself without MI5 lifting a finger. People are already turning themselves into spimes. You don’t even need to make a decision: the data you produce is already enough to reveal all sorts of information about you. Today, these behaviours may seem potentially risky, odd and perhaps egotistical. Tomorrow, it may seem equally odd – even suspicious – if no-one knows where you are and what you’re doing.

picture credit: *janina*

The idea is that fans can collaborate with the band in their latest music video. You use your webcam to imitate a pose taken by a band member (e.g. arms out wide or sticking out your tongue). Then upload your snap to the site and it is then integrated — every hour, on the hour — into the video. It creates a phenomenal blurring effect as dozens of user photos follow every move of the band, in synchronisation.

More than 8500 people have already taken part. Not enormous numbers perhaps, by some people’s standards. But hey, it’s for a Dutch indie band I’ve never heard of.

To me, it illustrates a few great ideas about doing social media well:

• Don’t make your users do all the work. Send us your videos and we might turn it into an advert sounds so phony and exploitative nowadays.
• Reward your people instantly — or as close to that as you can.
• Make it something that makes your relationship closer. Something that’s really sharing, not paying lip service.
• Make it joyous if you possibly can. I don’t own a webcam, but I’m tempted to get one after seeing this!

photo credit: Michale

via Jez Kay

In a story from the Onion news network, an archaeologist discovers traces of an ancient network of people known as Friendster.

Internet Archaeologists Find Ruins Of ‘Friendster’ Civilization

Not so much ‘fake’ news on this occasion. More like news that hasn’t happened yet. I can see this being broadcast 100 years from now.

YouTube – The Social Media Guru.

Have you even read my online internet blog? It’s mega-awesome.

I thought this was gorgeous. Life looks so tidy when we’re speeded up.

Small Life in Cologne from Christoph Schaarschmidt on Vimeo.

You’ve probably already seen this, even though it was published just a week ago.

It’s had nearly two million views in the last week, over 6,000 comments on YouTube itself, and been plugged into 826 blog posts. Among its honours, it’s the #2 – Top Favourited (All Time) – Sport. If it weren’t for Susan Boyle, it would be top video global of the month. It’s almost perfect in its spreadability:

• expertly filmed and edited
• great soundtrack
• the guy totally rides a bicycle up a frickin’ tree! a tree!

There are two schools of stunt videos: ones that go horribly wrong and paens to skill. This definitely falls into the latter camp. If you read through the comments on YouTube, you’ll find the general tenor is:

I’m not going to hold myself back..
WHAT THE FUCK WAS THIS???
OMFG I HAVE NEVER SEEN THAT GOOD HANDLING OF BIKE EVER.
Dude you fuckin rock, hold it up!

Like the spate of parkour videos that appeared a couple of years ago, it’s not just about skill: it’s transgressive – this is not the sort of thing your mum would want you to do. The police would give you a good talking to, as well. Actually, I don’t want you to do it, either – the tree will win. It’s not robbery or beating people up, though. This is peaceful – but definitely not passive – resistance. It’s all about ignoring the boundaries society wants to put on you. Jumping over the fence rather than going round it.

It’s also a film about being solitary: generally there’s no-one around but Danny, and where there are people they don’t get close, or even appear to notice. When they do notice – as with the closing shot, where he jumps off the bridge – by the time they’ve reacted, he’s gone. Especially interesting since one of the commentators says that he’s fairly well-known around Edinburgh and “always draws a big crowd”.

I suspect these latter two points speak very directly to the people who are spreading the film. This is a rebellion articulated through actions, not words.

At the same time, it’s very Scottish – or British. There’s a tone of grace, understatement and humility. The setting is the nice part of Edinburgh, not the ‘hood. There aren’t the fast edits and flash effects you’re used to in a stunts video. You aren’t listening to aggressive hip-hop or grindcore; you’re listening to a slow ballad called The Funeral. The guy doesn’t even speak, let alone brag or give us some nonsense about dedication and spirituality. And the video starts with him falling off the fence – twice, rather than a parade of victories. At 4:10, notice as he goes back and closes the gate he’s just jumped over – that’s a British stuntman for you.

Like most interesting things, it’s a mass of contradictions.

Anyway, well-done to Danny MacAskill and Dave Sowerby and also to Inspired Bicycles who sponsored them.

When you have this sort of team on your side.

Only about 20 months late on this.

(And yes – I wish I could shut off that frickin’ tweeting from the Cooking Mama post below. I’ll replace the widget with a link v.soon.

Via Jemima Kiss