Those Who Own One

By | May 6, 2006
8 Comments

A while back, I wrote about the first software company I worked for, where we used the following tagline to promote our typography and page layout software:

The power of the press belongs to those who own one.

Another take on this saying, more cynical or more realistic — or perhaps even more empowering and optimistic, depending on your view point — is this:

The freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.

Both are true. The freedom and the power go hand-in-hand. There’s probably also a responsibility component that needs to be worked into the formula, but I haven’t seen it stated in tagline form to date.

All right. If you insist:

The responsibility of the press belongs to those who own one.

Hey, is it just me, or does that one not scan nearly as well as the other two? I wonder why? Maybe it should be more like:

The responsibility of the press is assumed by those who own one.

Closer, but no cigar. The problem, I think, is that we readily identify the phrase “the power of the press” and of course everyone has heard of “the freedom of the press” but the phrase “the responsibility of the press” is just not that familiar. How interesting that we should know those first two so intimately, and that third one should be so alien.

Apparently, “those who own one” have spent a lot more time touting their power and freedom than they have pondering their responsibility. But I guess that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

Anyway, I digress.

This Washington Post article, via Mr. “The Power of the Blogosphere Belongs Primarily to Me (and a Few Others)”, really drives the point home. A couple of decades ago, we were excited when small businesses and individuals assumed even a small piece of the publishing industry. Now the whole thing is available to all of us. The barriers to entry for book publishing have been dropped to pretty much ground level. And it goes far beyond the traditional power of the press. As the article points out, today almost anyone can publish a book. But if you’d rather, you can cut a record. Or maybe make a movie. Or, what the hey, become a broadcaster.

The power, the freedom, and (damn it all) the responsibility now belong to anyone who cares to take them on. Kind of makes you wonder what’s coming next, doesn’t it?

  • http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog Michael Anissimov

    What’s next for personal communication?

    Well, it kinda seems like we already have everything. Weblogs, webcams, IM, VOIP. The only things left are either 3D telepresence or direct brain-to-brain interfaces. Or can you think of something else?

  • Will Brown

    What’s next for personal communication?

    Understanding, maybe?

    Widespread access to a better megaphone doesn’t actually equate to better communication (he points out the obvious). That’s not an argument for restriction of access, but a strategic opportunity for someone (more likely lot’s of someones) to create and market device’s or techniques that enhance transmission of clarity of intent.

    I think one of the more profound unintended consequences of mass access to personal communication tech will be the mass debate over social ethics (or public behavior, if you prefer). The more people able to express themselves, the greater the need for a mechanism to avoid mis-understanding. Emoticons are a cutsey effort to achieve this, but obviously much room remains for improvement.

    [Why no paragraph breaks in the preview? Very confusing.]

  • MikeD

    Understanding personal communication – Web 2.0 has already separated the content from the rendering agent (browser) – so taken another step farther, the ‘rendering agent’ for the presentation of ideas needs equally valid markup. I doubt meat-based brains have the capacity to simultaneously have a thought and accurately describe the structural context of that same thought. So my personal translation agent will learn my language/sentence structure/contextual use of words/ideation and express this using a bias-neutral markup. I am free to continue in my natural language with the full expectation that your rendering agent will translate the markup representing my idea into your natural language. Maybe Artificial Intelligence is a bad moniker, perhaps AI should refer to Assistive Intelligence when it pertains to the abstraction of interface between two parties.

    btw Michael, “the only things left”? I certainly hope not :)

  • http://www.artofwarplus.com/wordpress/ Will Brown

    MikeD:

    I think “degree of bias” would have to be a selectable function as that is often as not a part of the message being transmitted. Making that distinction detectable to the recipient by some universally understood metric would be a positive step, I agree, and refers back to my earlier emoticons example. Being able to reliably separate the factual content from the sender’s intent is a critical factor to achieving understanding of a message. It’s not at all clear how to do this absent the visual and other signals we consciously and otherwise send in F2F communication.

    I like your “Assistive Intelligence” distinction, I think it better comports with the direction AI development seems to be persueing.

  • Karl Hallowell

    IMHO, written language is highly evolved for non-F2F communication. Instead, I find that most of the problems with communication (including F2F) come about through at least three causes: first, that one or more of the parties isn’t sincere; second, that the parties involved have incompatible beliefs, self-interests, or semantics; or third, that one or more parties isn’t communicating competently.

    The limitations of the medium actually aren’t that significant. People can communicate meaningfully with Morse code which is even more restricted.

    I think markets provide a significant improvement in communication. Namely, you put your money where your mouth is. This weeds out both incompetent and deceptive communication since either will lose money long term. It still doesn’t adequately cover the matter of incompatible belief systems since those often come from matter that can’t be properly measured and traded in a market. More importantly, if an event doesn’t effect the value of something in the market, then it is invisible to the market.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Phil Bowermaster

    Lots of great thoughts here. I would point out that the power and freedom of the press being moved into the hands of individuals is as much about mass communication as it is personal. With blogs and podcasts and self-publishing, mass communication has become a form a personal communication.

  • MikeD

    Phil – with personal topics of interest becoming increasingly specialized, the only way to find anyone to discuss them is to broadcast and wait. That may explain my recent addiction to this site… the latency for new ideas is low :)

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    One argument against bloggers that the MSM has made (and probably will continue to make) is that now that everyone has access, there are no gatekeepers. We have a race to the bottom where the loudest and shrillest voices prevail.

    This, of course, shows a profound lack of understanding of how linking within the blogosphere works to bring eyes to good writing/opinion.

    Sometimes we bloggers link to stuff we think is stupid, but then only to explain why it’s stupid. Usually, we link to writing we think is good. The better something is, the more links it gets. It’s not that there are no gatekeepers, its just that the role of gatekeeper has been dispersed throughout the Internet. Dispersed, but with concentrations of this power in the hands of highly trusted bloggers like The Instapundit.

    That trust isn’t guaranteed to be permanent. The MSM had a virtual monopoly on ideas for 40 years, but Glenn – even if he has the stamina to keep blogging hard for 40 more years – doesn’t have a monopoly.

    If Glenn were to join the KKK his hits might go up temporarily – readers trying to figure out what the heck happened to Glenn – but his trust would plummet and other gatekeepers would quickly take his place.