By now, everyone has heard and encountered the Apple iPod, and read articles discussing not only its ability to play music and videos, but it’s cultural influence and significance. And we marvel over the choice and freedoms it gives us. But these developments actually disguise a more important aspect of iPod’s influence – it is changing the way we relate to each other, and eroding the foundations of society. It’s not doing this on it’s own, mind you, but it is a catalyst that is producing a revolution. Here’s why:
Others have commented how iPod listeners are off in their own little worlds, divorced from the people around them, creating their own space, uninfluenced (and unconcerned and uninterested) by those around them. However, the addition of video to the iPod is also changing the inherent structure of our communications infrastructure, along with VOIP, PVRs, and the telcos fighting cable providers for telephone customers.
Prior to the iPod, when someone wanted to watch something, they had to hook up with a middleman, such as a local television station or network affilitate, to access it. They might record it on a VCR and watch it, time-shifted, at their convenience, but their source was still a fairly traditional access point for programming that was shared by all who had access to that channel. The iPod changed that in a profound way. Now the consumer can buy the video feed for, say Desperate Housewives for cash from the producer, going through iTunes (i.e., Apple computer) rather than the local television station that happens to carry ABC television programming. This disconnect is far more important than it first appears. Now there is effectively a direct link between a program’s producer and the individual consumer who watches it. Who needs the local television affiliate/ cable channel/ satellite provider? The Internet provides the pipeline, and, what’s more, the producer can gather a heck of a lot more information about the end viewer than ever before (although that’s not yet being fully exploited). If you project this forward, then video production companies (or even individuals) can see, from the download statistics, who is watching their programming, which episodes (and hence, which topics) they like most, which actors capture their attention, what time of day, what demograph they fit into, and much of the heavy data mining that the retail industry is now practicing. And the cost of distribution plummets as well.
Moreover, they can start to offer viewers a range of deals: the viewer can buy the program outright, without commercials or interruptions. Or they can buy it with commercials – in which case, the commercials will be tailored specifically to the individuals watching the video, which optimizes the ‘buy’ for the advertiser, since they’re only getting the eyeballs they want with no wasted viewers outside the desired demograph/psychograph. Or they can get some combination, perhaps by sharing personal information (stored once, and uploaded with each download) so that further, more intensive data mining can be performed, much the way the frequent buyer clubs allow merchants to gather and data mine personal information in the retail industry. So the result is additional revenue streams, lower distribution costs – and a further, massive fragmentation of media sources and outlets since any producer, anywhere, can sell to any consumer, anywhere.
This will be aided by the traditional telephone companies, who are in a fight for survival against VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) providers, and cable companies invading their marketplace for local phone service. Since the cable companies are invading the phone business, the phone companies have little choice but to fight back by providing video service over the phone line, mostly through high speed compression, but aided by network upgrades that have been performed over the past decade in anticipation of this war. Consumers who get their video images this way are effectively getting ‘television’ over the Internet – and again, sidestepping the local affiliate or the program middleman.
Which means that the financial underpinning of the traditional means of distributing video-formatted information is being eroded. What’s the point in watching the local ABC affiliate for ABC-originated programming when you can get it direct, potentially without commercials (or even with commercials that are more interesting to you)? This could wipe out the network affiliate system across America – and almost completely destroy the private television broadcasters in countries like Canada, who rely on American programming to attract most of their viewers, and sell most of their commercials. Why go through a middleman when you can buy direct on more interesting terms?
What’s more, this accelerates a trend that has been developing for some time: the psychological isolation of people by interest group. Thirty years ago, people watched more or less the same programs, including news and entertainment, chosen from three main sources, with a number of minor players thrown in. Now there are so many choices that people can pick and choose according to their interests, biases, and prejudices. Hence, more liberal-oriented people can choose exclusively liberal-biased sources and comments. And the more conservative-oriented can pick from exclusively conservative-oriented programming. But beyond this, people who are pro-abortion, or pro-environment, or pro- or anti- anything can have their prejudices constantly reinforced, with the result that we become convinced that not only are we right, but anyone who disagrees with us is obviously either stupid, or malicious. We don’t hear other sides of the argument presented cogently, dispassionately, or intelligently.
So the iPod not only isolates people from those physically around them, but it is accelerating the erosion of reasoned debate, broad dissemination of diverse ideas, and, in the process, mentally, ideologically, and psychologically isolating people from their neighbors and their peers. The result is more confrontation, more acrimony, less civil discourse, more poorly reasoned policy, and the politics of divisiveness. But don’t blame the poor iPod; we were trending this way in any case. The iPod has just accelerated the trend.
by futurist Richard Worzel
© Copyright, IF Research, March 2006.
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