Message from Michael - The Information Deluge - December 16, 2009

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        December 16, 2009                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

      THE INFORMATION DELUGE

      TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY

      THE NEWS CHALLENGE CHALLENGE

      COCKTAIL CHATTER --  ONE COMPANY, ONE COUNTRY

 

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      THE INFORMATION DELUGE:  Or, put another way, we need a modern-day Noah to help us survive the information flood.  According to the Global Information Industry Center at the University of California/ San Diego, “Americans consumed information for about 1.3 Trillion hours (which totaled) 3.6 Zettabytes and 10,845 Trillion words.”  Or, put another way, Americans spent 12 hours a day consuming information which translates to 100,500 words and 34 Gigabytes of information “for an average person on an average day.”  Now, this idea may be a little hard to grasp, but the study authors say the actual consumption of information in bytes increased by only 5.4% per year, but the capacity to process data rose by at least 30% per year.  Okay, while you’re trying to process that, here are some other points made in the study.  Traditional media (radio and TV) still dominate our information consumption pattern, accounting for 60% of the hours spent.  Despite the rise in computers, more than three-quarters of U.S. households’ information is spent with non-computer sources.  Yet, because of computers, the amount of information “received interactively” is a full third of all words and more than half of all bytes received.  The authors make the point that information consumption was passive in the past with the telephone being the only ‘interactive’ medium.  Americans spent 16% of their “information hours” using the Internet versus 41% using Television.  And reading, which had declined because of television, has actually tripled from 1980 to 2008 because it is the “overwhelmingly preferred way to receive words on the Internet.”  

Esoteric but interesting is a point made by the authors that they are only measuring “artificial” forms of information.  If they were to include “personal conversation” as a source of information, “it is possible that we receive fewer bytes Info/c than our ancestors did 100 years ago.”  Info/c, by their definition, is ‘compressed bytes’ information, and personal conversation is “very high bandwidth” with “stereo vision and sound.”  So, three hours of personal conversation at this bandwidth would translate into 135 Gigabytes of Info/c – about four times the average daily consumption today.  As to the future… well, the authors admit they’re not so sure.  Television represents the biggest shift.  Mobile television and video over the Internet may cause the greatest ‘dislocation’ in information, but mobile television is still a ‘niche product’ and Internet video is a complement rather than a supplement to television because the bandwidth challenges means most Internet video is grainy and slow to load.  When bandwidths increase, that could result in a dramatic change.  The fastest future growth will probably come from computer gaming, according to the report.

Some Caveats:  The authors distinguish between data and information, with information being considered a sub-set of data.  Also as hard as it may be to believe, the study authors say their numbers are only for home and out-of-home information consumption and NOT work times.  The authors also note that their reports are only estimates because “in some cases, behavior is changing so fast that January 2008 and December 2008 may be quite different.”  By the way, because I figure that some of my very smart readers would know this, but some (like me) wouldn’t, a Zetabyte is a Million Million Gigabytes.

      TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY:  That still is the question, and two recent reports did nothing to help resolve the question, according to an article from the Online Publishers Association.  The Boston Consulting Group found that nearly half of Americans (48%) would be willing to pay for online news content, but only about $3 a month.  More people are willing to pay for unique local news content (72%) or specialized coverage (73%).  On the other hand, Forrester Research found that four out of five (80%) were NOT willing to pay with less than one in ten (8%) saying they would be willing to pay if it were one fee for ALL subscription content.  A measly 3% liked, or accepted, the idea of micro-payments.     

      THE NEWS CHALLENGE CHALLENGE:  No, that’s not a typo.  It’s to say that now the challenge begins for the people behind the Knight News Challenge.  The project which has funded such ideas as Adrian Holovaty’s Everyblock and Sir Tim Berner-Lee’s Transparent Journalism had 788 applications by the closing date.  This is the place to go, if you want to see what the future of journalism may be.  As the site authors note, “nobody knows all the answers.”  That’s why the funders, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, say they created their various funding programs – to seed experiments.  Some of those seeds grow into oaks.  The Everyblock project which provided some templated tools for people to create citizen journalism websites in cities around the world was recently sold to MSNBC for a figure reportedly in the Millions of dollars.  The sale has been controversial because of the irony that a mammoth mainstream media operation now owns what was supposed to be a micro-journalism mechanism.  But we’ve already talked about that in a previous Message about citizen journalism efforts.  In any case, the point is you can visit the site to find several innovative and interesting ideas.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I have submitted an application to create a consultancy of news professionals turned news professors.  As always I try to keep the Message objective and avoid self-serving statements, so I won’t go into what a great idea it is.  However, I have to note that humorously (depending on one’s sense of humor), the Knight project which has a technology and new media focus obviously has a glitch in its technology.  I have received more than two dozen emails saying the same thing – that the contest is closed.   

      COCKTAIL CHATTER:  One company (Nokia) accounts for a tenth (9%) of all the corporate taxes paid in one country (Finland).  A little factoid buried in an article in The New York Times about the company’s struggles.  Even though Nokia dominates the smart phone market (16.2 million phones, compared to Apple’s 7 Million and Research in Motion’s 8.5 Million), Nokia has the lowest growth rate of any company.  In fact, Nokia used to account for a fifth (19%) of all corporate taxes paid in Finland.  Other factoids were that Nokia accounts for one third of Finland’s total research and spending and one quarter of its total stock exchange capitalization.  Similar to the conflicting studies mentioned above about content payment, a report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, found that a quarter (26%) of teenagers of driving age admitted texting while driving, but half (48%) say they have been in a car while somebody else texted.  As almost a footnote, or maybe additional perspective, to the Information report above, comScore reports 167 Million Web users watched 28 Billion online videos during the month of October.

      FOOTNOTE:  As several industry newsletters have noted, the Federal Communications Commission wasted no time in jumping on the question of using television spectrum for broadband bandwidth expansion.  I only make this a footnote, because I have hit the subject so often in the last month.  But the FCC action is worth noting because it is such quick movement on a controversial topic.  First off, the commission issued a “public notice” soliciting comments by December 21^st.  Then, it followed that with the hiring of a Duke University law professor who has written on the subject and whom TVNewsCheck editor Harry Jessel characterized as a “broadcast TV hitman.”    

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