I
have known Douglas for more than ten years now, both as an author of
fascinating books like this one and because we traveled in some of the
same circles online.
I was particularly taken by his book Media Virus! which, like Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, correctly predicted some behavior in society and with technology.
I have followed his career and, after hearing about his latest book, I asked him if we could do an interview and he graciously agreed.
I began the interview with a mis-statment for which I apologize. I also asked a tough question or two but that was because I hold him in high regard and was disappointed with the book's ending. That said, I heartily endorse this book.
You mention in the book that you coined the term "viral marketing" and sound frustrated about what that term has come to mean. Can you explain what you were originally talking about versus what it has come to be about?
Douglas: I didn't coin "viral marketing." I coined media viruses and viral media. I wasn't thinking about the marketing of products. I was looking at the way ideas spread through a culture, thanks to more interactive media. Before interactive media, most media was broadcast media. Regular people didn't generally have access to television broadcasting, radio, or even things like blogs or Twitter, because there was no internet. So the only stories and ideas that tended to penetrate the culture were ones approved or concocted by those with access to these very expensive media facilities.
By the early 90's, much of that began to break down. Even before the Web, there was an Internet, fax machines, zine culture, other means for distribution. Cable television and 24-hour news opened up the media, as did video recorders and consumer-grade cameras. You have to remember, this stuff didn't exist before the 80's and 90's.
And this changed the way media spread ideas, from a controlled top-down system to a more bottom-up, biological one. I posed that ideas traveled through the mediaspace the way a virus moved through a culture of organisms. It had a sticky outer shell (the new use of media or shocking breaking of a rule) and a potent set of ideas inside it (a black guy getting beaten by white cops, etc.) that replicated.
My premise was that viruses spread if they provoked an inappropriate cultural immune response. And that this would be because there was some underlying cultural agenda that wasn't being expressed. So a virus about gay people would spread because we have not yet, as a culture, accepted homosexuality.
I enjoyed reading your tirade about the new agey conference you went to where you went off on video news releases and how "advertising peace" was an oxymoron. I take it you've not been invited back?
No. They were actually upset by what I wrote. But it was great for me to find out for sure that those spiritual leaders people respect are really full of crap. It makes it easier to move on.
I was struck by your comments about Malcolm Gladwell. What do you think it is about Malcolm Gladwell that have made him such a popular author especially since you suggest what he is saying isn't necessarily new or right, referring to it at one point as "pop science."
Malcolm is talented at what he does - don't get me wrong. But the reasons for his immense popularity, I feel, is that he is applying his insights to the market. The way to make money selling books is to write books that help people make money - or at least make them believe they will make money. Gladwell's books help marketers justify their techniques, and looking at people as unthinking, manipulable cogs. If you really believe that people make decisions in stupid ways, then there's no reason to feel bad about manipulating them to make those decisions in your business's favor.
While I got a lot out of your book i feel like it's subtitle isn't quite accurate. It sure did a great job describing how life is a corporation but I kept waiting for a chapter that told us "how to take it back" as the subhead suggested it would. I got to the last chapter and even when telling there of possible solutions it seemed to suggest some of those would not fully work. Did I miss something? Are we out of luck if we want to change things?
How to take it back is to realize how we gave it up. How to take it back is too easy. That's the problem. It's as easy as joining CSA's, starting local currencies, volunteering at public schools, meeting and helping our neighbors. SO easy. All of this nation's economic and social ills - well, 99.9 percent of them - could be solved in a few weeks of trivial efforts. It's that easy.
We have our heads and hearts caught in a machine that isn't real. We are giving it power every moment. In order to break free, it's important to understand how we are the people giving it power. We are the ones who believe in the power of the cash we use, the corporations we work for, and the brands we worship.
The way to take back the world again is to respect the human over the artificial - the real over the economic metric. It is much much easier than big healthcare plans and political campaigns. It is so easy that it appears to many as invisible. But the techniques are in the book, and pretty obvious to everyone. They just don't like the idea of using local currency because deep inside they believe they can make "real" cash in the end. They don't like local agriculture because they think the chard might be dirty or something. Or that they won't be safe in some way. But that's all just programming.
Let me flip that question around to make it less negative: How do we benefit as readers by knowing that life isn't ideal? And can real steps be taken to change it?
I don't know that life isn't ideal. It's not an ideal, in that it's real. Ideals are artificial concepts held up as truths. I mean, in some Platonic sense.
The best things people can do to start making life better for everyone sound like nothing but they are very very hard.
1. Meet some of your neighbors. find out what they can do for you and what you can do for them. learn to accept their help, and to give help back.
2. Find out a good way to source your food. don't support big agriculture if you can help it. See if there is a CSA in your area. That stands for community supported agriculture. Find a computer and type "CSA" in the google search box.
3. See if there is a local currency movement in your area. again, google will help with that. if there's not, start one.
4. Talk to people in the real world, not on the internet, who might be interested in joining you to take back your town.
In the section on mass-marketing and branding, you mention how human relationships once dominated local economies and how ad figures like the Quaker Oats guy, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima give faces to their products to create a sense of familiarity. How do we get back to human relationships being essential? I know you mentioned CSAs and volunteer work, but what else?
First, and most importantly, we have to learn to see other people as valuable to us. As real and important. Most of us still *prefer* the Quaker to the neighbor. So it's a matter of starting to talk to people. In public places, to begin with. Maybe go to a cafe or a park and strike up a conversation with someone.
And as you talk to them, begin to notice what about engaging with the other person you find so difficult. What about the person annoys you, and why? Is it you being annoyed to your core, or is it some program running in your head that *says* this person is not worth your time?
Try going to a Farmers Market, or another place where the people who had some connection to making the food or product are actually there. Or learn about the things you buy before you buy them (and buy less). Think about what need you are hoping a product to fulfill, and then ask yourself if the product is the way to fulfill that need.
You mention that we go around with this nagging feeling that something is wrong, "deep in the thrall of a system that no one really likes, no one remembers asking for, yet no one can escape." While we all have moments of feeling stuck within the system, is life in modern corporate-run America really so bad for the average Joe?
Yes. Take a look inside his veins.
Do social networking sites make this desocialization of the worker better or worse?
I don't like them.
I find the concept of local currencies interesting, but wonder about the practicality of having multiple decentralized currencies. Is our recent economic crisis an opportunity for new monies to arise?
It is so much more practical for people to have money they can use. With money, people can conduct transactions. Without money, it is very hard for them to start businesses. With only one money, controlled by a monopoly of bankers who do not mean to share, it is very impractical for small businesses to start up or conduct business.
The fact that banks now refuse to lend money to small businesses is a terrific opportunity for local currencies to start up that support local businesses. The examples of local currencies in the book really do demonstrate how practical they are. They saved the health care system in Japan, and the organic restaurant in my town. Your resistance is internal.
I was particularly taken by his book Media Virus! which, like Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs, correctly predicted some behavior in society and with technology.
I have followed his career and, after hearing about his latest book, I asked him if we could do an interview and he graciously agreed.
I began the interview with a mis-statment for which I apologize. I also asked a tough question or two but that was because I hold him in high regard and was disappointed with the book's ending. That said, I heartily endorse this book.
You mention in the book that you coined the term "viral marketing" and sound frustrated about what that term has come to mean. Can you explain what you were originally talking about versus what it has come to be about?
Douglas: I didn't coin "viral marketing." I coined media viruses and viral media. I wasn't thinking about the marketing of products. I was looking at the way ideas spread through a culture, thanks to more interactive media. Before interactive media, most media was broadcast media. Regular people didn't generally have access to television broadcasting, radio, or even things like blogs or Twitter, because there was no internet. So the only stories and ideas that tended to penetrate the culture were ones approved or concocted by those with access to these very expensive media facilities.
By the early 90's, much of that began to break down. Even before the Web, there was an Internet, fax machines, zine culture, other means for distribution. Cable television and 24-hour news opened up the media, as did video recorders and consumer-grade cameras. You have to remember, this stuff didn't exist before the 80's and 90's.
And this changed the way media spread ideas, from a controlled top-down system to a more bottom-up, biological one. I posed that ideas traveled through the mediaspace the way a virus moved through a culture of organisms. It had a sticky outer shell (the new use of media or shocking breaking of a rule) and a potent set of ideas inside it (a black guy getting beaten by white cops, etc.) that replicated.
My premise was that viruses spread if they provoked an inappropriate cultural immune response. And that this would be because there was some underlying cultural agenda that wasn't being expressed. So a virus about gay people would spread because we have not yet, as a culture, accepted homosexuality.
I enjoyed reading your tirade about the new agey conference you went to where you went off on video news releases and how "advertising peace" was an oxymoron. I take it you've not been invited back?
No. They were actually upset by what I wrote. But it was great for me to find out for sure that those spiritual leaders people respect are really full of crap. It makes it easier to move on.
I was struck by your comments about Malcolm Gladwell. What do you think it is about Malcolm Gladwell that have made him such a popular author especially since you suggest what he is saying isn't necessarily new or right, referring to it at one point as "pop science."
Malcolm is talented at what he does - don't get me wrong. But the reasons for his immense popularity, I feel, is that he is applying his insights to the market. The way to make money selling books is to write books that help people make money - or at least make them believe they will make money. Gladwell's books help marketers justify their techniques, and looking at people as unthinking, manipulable cogs. If you really believe that people make decisions in stupid ways, then there's no reason to feel bad about manipulating them to make those decisions in your business's favor.
While I got a lot out of your book i feel like it's subtitle isn't quite accurate. It sure did a great job describing how life is a corporation but I kept waiting for a chapter that told us "how to take it back" as the subhead suggested it would. I got to the last chapter and even when telling there of possible solutions it seemed to suggest some of those would not fully work. Did I miss something? Are we out of luck if we want to change things?
How to take it back is to realize how we gave it up. How to take it back is too easy. That's the problem. It's as easy as joining CSA's, starting local currencies, volunteering at public schools, meeting and helping our neighbors. SO easy. All of this nation's economic and social ills - well, 99.9 percent of them - could be solved in a few weeks of trivial efforts. It's that easy.
We have our heads and hearts caught in a machine that isn't real. We are giving it power every moment. In order to break free, it's important to understand how we are the people giving it power. We are the ones who believe in the power of the cash we use, the corporations we work for, and the brands we worship.
The way to take back the world again is to respect the human over the artificial - the real over the economic metric. It is much much easier than big healthcare plans and political campaigns. It is so easy that it appears to many as invisible. But the techniques are in the book, and pretty obvious to everyone. They just don't like the idea of using local currency because deep inside they believe they can make "real" cash in the end. They don't like local agriculture because they think the chard might be dirty or something. Or that they won't be safe in some way. But that's all just programming.
Let me flip that question around to make it less negative: How do we benefit as readers by knowing that life isn't ideal? And can real steps be taken to change it?
I don't know that life isn't ideal. It's not an ideal, in that it's real. Ideals are artificial concepts held up as truths. I mean, in some Platonic sense.
The best things people can do to start making life better for everyone sound like nothing but they are very very hard.
1. Meet some of your neighbors. find out what they can do for you and what you can do for them. learn to accept their help, and to give help back.
2. Find out a good way to source your food. don't support big agriculture if you can help it. See if there is a CSA in your area. That stands for community supported agriculture. Find a computer and type "CSA" in the google search box.
3. See if there is a local currency movement in your area. again, google will help with that. if there's not, start one.
4. Talk to people in the real world, not on the internet, who might be interested in joining you to take back your town.
In the section on mass-marketing and branding, you mention how human relationships once dominated local economies and how ad figures like the Quaker Oats guy, Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima give faces to their products to create a sense of familiarity. How do we get back to human relationships being essential? I know you mentioned CSAs and volunteer work, but what else?
First, and most importantly, we have to learn to see other people as valuable to us. As real and important. Most of us still *prefer* the Quaker to the neighbor. So it's a matter of starting to talk to people. In public places, to begin with. Maybe go to a cafe or a park and strike up a conversation with someone.
And as you talk to them, begin to notice what about engaging with the other person you find so difficult. What about the person annoys you, and why? Is it you being annoyed to your core, or is it some program running in your head that *says* this person is not worth your time?
Try going to a Farmers Market, or another place where the people who had some connection to making the food or product are actually there. Or learn about the things you buy before you buy them (and buy less). Think about what need you are hoping a product to fulfill, and then ask yourself if the product is the way to fulfill that need.
You mention that we go around with this nagging feeling that something is wrong, "deep in the thrall of a system that no one really likes, no one remembers asking for, yet no one can escape." While we all have moments of feeling stuck within the system, is life in modern corporate-run America really so bad for the average Joe?
Yes. Take a look inside his veins.
Do social networking sites make this desocialization of the worker better or worse?
I don't like them.
I find the concept of local currencies interesting, but wonder about the practicality of having multiple decentralized currencies. Is our recent economic crisis an opportunity for new monies to arise?
It is so much more practical for people to have money they can use. With money, people can conduct transactions. Without money, it is very hard for them to start businesses. With only one money, controlled by a monopoly of bankers who do not mean to share, it is very impractical for small businesses to start up or conduct business.
The fact that banks now refuse to lend money to small businesses is a terrific opportunity for local currencies to start up that support local businesses. The examples of local currencies in the book really do demonstrate how practical they are. They saved the health care system in Japan, and the organic restaurant in my town. Your resistance is internal.
No comments:
Post a Comment