If I built the best-ever VCR, would you rush out to buy it? Of course not. Even though my VCR might be the most excellent VCR, no one cares about VCRs anymore. Being excellent at something no one cares about doesn't get you very far. What was excellent yesterday doesn't necessarily matter today. If I'm all about apples and you bring me oranges, I don't care how good the oranges are. So when … [Read more...]
Archives for 2011
Are you a Channel or are you a Library?
TV used to be an appointment medium. It's Thursday night at 8 and you're in front of the set watching or else you missed your favorite show. Then VCR's, DVD's and DVR's progressively pecked away at the appointment schedule. Many of us now wait till a show has aired and then watch a saved copy at our leisure. On-demand TV and mobile subscriptions from channels like HBO and services like Hulu … [Read more...]
Do you want to be my cable company or my TV provider?
I pay my cable provider to supply me with TV. Since I don't want to watch on my cable provider's schedule I pay for Tivo. Since my cable provider doesn't have all the movies I want to watch, I buy DVDs. I also have a Netflix subscription. Since I travel a lot I use Hulu. My cable provider isn't cheap. My cable provider thinks the value it delivers is access to its pipe. But I don't care about … [Read more...]
Sharing, The New Default
Build something in the physical world and the minute it's used it starts to decay - scuffs, dents, chips. Drive a car off the new car lot and it immediately loses ten percent of its value. Use something a lot and eventually it wears out. Art is different. A work of art gets more powerful when more people use it. Music that gives voice to people grows in meaning. A play that doesn't get discussed … [Read more...]
The New Literate?
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material. - Wikipedia Literacy at its most basic is the ability to read and write. Someone is judged "literate" by what they've read or written, and notions of literateness (as opposed to "literacy") have changed over time. Time was when definitions of literate … [Read more...]
The Classical Music Critic Goes Extinct
Seems important to note the passing of music criticism as a legitimate job in Canada. John Terauds, for six years staff classical music critic of the Toronto Star, was reassigned this week to the paper’s business section. He was the last full-time classical music critic at a Canadian newspaper. The job of full-time classical music critic literally ceases to exist in English-speaking Canada (Quebec … [Read more...]