Digital Media

I have recently and heavily involved myself with digital media and Web 2.0. When I was first introduced to myspace and YouTube, I thought they would be more than just a fad, but stopped short of saying that they would eventually revolutionize the way in which we think about media specifically and culture generally. But, after having learned a lot more about this new frontier in digital space, and after having converted myself into a myspace/YouTube addict, I am happy to report that I was wrong, and now I feel very strongly about the power of digital media.

In particular, I am fascinated by how the digital medium democratizes societies by returning power to the people. To borrow from the language of Mario Cuomo and Barack Obama: imagine there is neither a liberal media nor a conservative media but, through community blogging, community reviewing and content syndication in the post-Web 1.0 era, a united media that aggregates the views and experiences of people from all walks of life. Information is no longer fed from the ivory towers of the fourth estate; the collective “we” become the fourth estate.

Internet radio is but one of many examples of social democratization. Pop music becomes popular because of a variety of reasons, but one reason stands out: because radio jockeys play it. While I personally have nothing against radio jockeys (in fact, I admire their skills and up-to-date industry knowledge), I do often question their independence, particularly when radio stations are often controlled by large, profit-driven companies (e.g. Clear Channel in the U.S.). It has been well documented that these large companies, in return for bribes from music publishers (especially the majors), would play records of these publishers as though they were part of the normal day’s broadcast. I doubt that these “partnerships” have subsided after the payola scandals; my guess is that whenever the P&L is part of the equation (for a for-profit business, I suspect it always is), payola schemes will always exist, in one form or the other. It seems to me that people will be willing to partake of immoral activities so long as there are, for example, materially significant advantages. But what if the P&L is no longer in the equation, at least not when we simply want to sample music before buying, anytime we want, without someone sitting in a jockeying booth telling us what is best for us?

In a slightly different vein, I have qualms about society relying too much on a thesis of commerce driven by reviewers sitting atop ivory towers, telling us what is best for us. In many industries such as music, restaurant, film etc., reviews can often make or break a business. Just ask those whose restaurants had to close after an influential critic at a local paper wrote a scathingly bad review, or how some film reels have to be rolled back to the editing room for “retooling” because a thumb-up was missing. This particularly works against smaller players because they may not have the time or the resources to “retool” without collecting a bad slapping in the face before getting a legitimate shot at the market. These reviews, especially before the digital age, are important because they are often the only wide-band means by which a consumer is informed of products or services unless businesses engage heavily in advertising or marketing, or unless they organically grow and manage a word-of-mouth campaign. So long as readership is misled to believe that these reviews, however well-crafted and well-researched, are cultural arbiters of the times rather than exactly what they are –reviews by informed individuals –the information market will always be distorted.

More freedom to sample and consume, due to more leisure time and more disposable income, is certainly starting to dismantle the old status quo, but the current wave of technological innovation is also helping to facilitate change. Last.fm, for example, recommends songs by aggregating user listening habits into democratized social data. Myspace brings unknown musicians to the market without having them to weave through the old agency/radio vetting process or potentially illegal activities. MusicBrainz is a community music meta-database that tells you who else is listening to a particular song and how it is rated by the community-at-large. Many community sites, with focus from restaurants to shops, are allowing users to not only rate products and services but also share their ratings with other users. Power is thus shifting from the ivory tower to the hands of the digitally-connected folk.

Of course, there are still some barriers to entry: literacy, digital connectivity, and broadband penetration. However, these are small barriers to overcome in comparison with the old. I hope that I can write more about these developments in digital media, and how these developments are affecting each of us personally and us collectively, in the future.

Hello World!

This will be my third attempt at blogging. I’ll briefly discuss my first two attempts, as well as what I plan to do with this current endeavor.

My first attempt began back in July, 2001, when I got a new job that required me to move from a large progressive metropolitan city in the American east coast to a conservative suburban hinterland in the American south. For a while, I had difficulty accepting the fact that even the First World has such disparate cultures and ideals: gun control vs. gun ownership; conscious agnosticism vs. faith-based spiritualism; unrelenting pro-choice views vs. devout pro-life beliefs. As I started to think about such issues, I felt the need for a platform to further express myself and capture my thoughts. Thus was the beginning of Beijing Cowboy 1.0. The blog lasted for a not-so-grand period of three months before I decided to shut it down. My main reason for discontinuing was because I felt that my inadequate understanding of American history and culture was exposed in the synthesis of my writing. Another reason was because I didn’t, at that time, use a good authoring system to write my blog with, thus making my blogging affair both tedious and unpleasant.

My second attempt began in earnest in August, 2003, and lasted longer…for about a year. At that time I was introduced to and subsequently fascinated by MovableType, the authoring system that I wished I had when I started my first blog. I chose a topic, traditional media, and began to write profusely about newspaper, TV, and journalism in general. I didn’t harbor any thoughts of being an expert in the field. Nor did I have any aspirations to become a journalist. At that time, I was extremely frustrated by the neoconservative bias that seemed able to tint the media lens through which the average folk saw the world, especially the Iraq war. I felt that while some aspects of neoconservative scholarship have more merits than a traditional liberal would let on, I stood aghast at the sight of the (American) media unreservedly toeing the neoconservative line just as the country marched into an unilateral war. I felt that consent, even if real, was so manufactured, and media so biased to a level that society was collectively made worse off as a consequence. Thus, I started thinking and writing nearly daily (sometimes a few times a day), and managed to build up a decent amount of daily traffic (mostly from people who know me personally). However, the blog eventually fell prey to a deterioration in production quantity (and quality), and subsequently my terminating ax, when I took time away from blogging to engage in local grass-roots politics, in firm belief that I could do more as I threw time and effort into informing voters about their choices.

This version of Beijing Cowboy, 3.0, is set up neither by a sensory overload in a foreign land, nor by a commitment to comment on my perceived vices of the fourth estate. This time, I really want to blog about Beijing, about its people, its culture, its food, and anything that crosses my paths as I explore the city. I find the city to be deeply sensitive to and aware of history, passionately romantic regarding human relationships, steadfastly resilient in respect to defending its culture and pride, and also fanatically open-minded about new ideas and designs. This is a place I’ll call home, at least in the near future, and I hope to blog about it, as well as my life in general, as much as I possibly can.