More broadband-shmoadband, I’m afraid.
The forehead-slapping is happening with disturbing regularity these days; as is my writing something here in response to the increasingly-infuriating new media section of the Guardian. The folk at the online section of the paper should walk across the office every so often and give the media folk a good clue-slapping.
Remember the Pew report on habits of broadband usage? Here’s the entry on boingboing.net with a link to it.
Well, David Docherty, “MD for Broadband Content, Telewest” in his weekly free advertisment column in the new media section of the Guardian has stumbled across it, and spun it in a spectacularly strange style towards the ‘broadband-needs-high-quality-content’ arguement.
Docherty picks up the main points of the report: that those with broadband connections enjoy creating as much as consuming. And, that their patterns of usage are those of frequent ‘snacking’ of services and information plus, longer sessions of creation or sharing services and information.
He even admits to having his own blog, but forgets to share with us the URL (or whether he allows vistors to comment on his posts…)
However, he attributes this to the speed of the connection, and the mysterious allure of that ‘dark matter’ of the web: “rich content”*. The speed of the connection, or more specifically the lack of latency in the reponsiveness of the web might be part of the appeal of broadband (it certainly is for me) but this then becomes inversely-proportional to the ‘richness’ of the content (cf. ‘Loosemore’s law’).
Always-On is still the killer property of broadband connections; the speed of the system is a close second. The speed of that system is, still however, contingent on the design surrounding and containing the information and services** going through it. ‘Rich content’* smacks of cholesterol-laden cream pies clogging up the newly-widened broadband arteries of the web.
Of course, even the most fit and healthly of us like to pig-out on something that’s bad for us every so often. Does that mean that we create industries that we later try and sue because we didn’t realise how bad they would be for our health?
The Pew report’s main message for Mr. Docherty should be that the always-on, connected-community would rather bake their own tasty treats and share them with each other, than be force-fed the dubious confections dreamt-up by ‘rich-content producers’. Maybe Telewest would be better off looking after it’s delivery business that trying to play master pattisiere…
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* please, can someone tell me what makes ‘rich content’ so, well, ‘rich’??
** I’m experimenting with forcing myself to replace the word ‘content’ in anything I write with what I actually mean in that context, with revealing but often excruiating results.
Petafloptimism 
The Guardian’s online section, continues to provide some tasty platters of sexism, and is surely worth reading for this reason alone. Today’s classics, from the article ‘Boys, boys, boys’ about the difficulties of working in a male dominated new media industry, contains these priceless examples from Jane Austin (http://www.untold.net, Recollective): “…women are particularly good when it comes to the usability of a site… men are often so carried away by the beauty of what they have designed they forget to think about whether it is user-friendly”. Or even better “It’s viewed as macho to stay late. Lots of women told us that the men stay late to play computer games whereas they would prefer to go home or out for a drink when they finish work.” Doubtless, the industry is male dominated, but when these cliched assumptions are trotted out you have to wonder whether they’d ever make it to print if the roles were reversed.
In the eyes of yer Telewest types, Rich Content = Content that will make them rich.
Of course looking at TW’s debt accrued so far, it’ll never happen.
Thanks for the comments. Broadband is only at the beginning of its life and therefore it would be bonkers to restrict it’s future to what it can currently do. That’s why I do my column for the Guardian. Columns are in the end no different from blogs. I’ve got my own views, so why not express them.
Of course the internet has its own dynamic. I’ve been involved with it since around 96. I care passionately about it. It doesn’t mean i can’t be critical of aspects of it, or desperate to push out the boundaries!
PS My Blog is tied to my new book, The Killing Jar. More follows.
PPS. all criticism glady accepted and replied to at above address.
Broadband “won’t succeed without content”
Remember those columns from Telewest “Managing Director of Broadband Content” David Docherty in the Guardian New Media section about how