Flashback Friday: Deserted Cities of the Web

I don't recall precisely when I got my first Goldstar modem to link my Mac to the various worlds beyond my home town. The World Wide Web did not yet exist. But there were communities forming, via chat rooms on America Online (AOL) other networks, and I was exploring them. It was a year or two before the WWW emerged, accessible first with Mosaic, then later that year with Netscape. AOL was only a fledgling then with a million members or less when I first took the name ennyman as my handle.

What I do recall is how invigorating it all was. There were chat rooms for everything, from writing and art to favorite authors, music, politics of all stripes, cars, history interests of all types, and on and on.

I taught a few writing "classes" in a chat room there where people typed "clap clap clap clap" at the end. I also did research on the series of articles I authored for The Senior Reporter exploring the issue of ethical issues in terminal health care.

Essentially, these forums enabled the development of short term or long term communities of people from anywhere in the world, if connected to the Web. One of these "communities" that I participated in included a former member of the '60's psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock. I forget now the theme that gave our group coherence, remembering only that we existed for a space of time.

The internet as we know it today has fostered innumerable numbers of such communities over the years. Sometime around eighteen years ago I became part of a Ning community that shared art. The site became a means of not only seeing the work of artists in other countries but fodder for blog content.

Social media platforms like Facebook advanced the sense of community possibilities as well.  After our 2011 Red Interactive show as part of Phantom Galleries - Superior, John Heino and I created a Red Interactive "community" on Facebook in which friends and participants were encouraged to share art and photography featuring the site's red theme. Red Interactive had a lot of energy initially, but over time the energy from this initial momentum subsided and the center of the community dissipated.

Around 2012 ago Twin Ports Arts Align was formed with more ambitious aims. The local nature of this online community included face-to-face meetings on a regular basis. But what I noticed after a few years was a slacking off in participation, and the feeling I got was that another community was evaporating.

The internet has often been compared to the Wild West and the metaphor seems to hold. There were territories to be settled, rules laid out, and an influx of people driven together by various passions, whether to
explore the unknown, make money through commercial endeavors, or to meet people with shared interests. And like the West, there are ghost towns everywhere, places where a community once thrived and now all that is left are abandoned homesteads.

While listening to an old Cream CD the song "Deserted Cities of the Heart" was playing and I couldn't help but think of all these deserted communities on the web. 

Around ten years ago the web was changing yet again. The big buzz was around the idea of content. "Content is king" seemed to be some kind of Holy Grail in the realm of marketing your goods and services. However, making content became so easy that we created a new problem. There's far more content than there is demand for it. In other words, as one B2B marketing spokesperson notes, "the supply of content is growing, but the demand is static."

Is this what happened to all those communities? Initially they promise something but to what end? When it is easy to belong, it is equally easy to disengage.

Maybe an online town comes and goes because the reason for its existence is unclear.

Or maybe there's something happening but many of the community members would rather lurk than contribute. I mean, we live in a culture where the actors are few and the fans are many. Have television, theater and sporting events turned us into a nation of passive viewers as opposed to active players? Then it should come as no surprise when the same thing happens online, for the cyber-world simply mirrors what is taking place in our "real" world.

What do you think?

Originally shared in June 2015, updated June 2025.

Is the Rise of Social Media Really a Reprise?

Last week I began reading Is the Internet Changing the Way We Think?, a collection of essays by various thinkers, assembled and edited by John Brockman. The subtitle is The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future. The list of contributors is impressive and the topics explored quite vast.

This blog post was stimulated by June Cohen, director of media, TED Conference, TED Talks. As you might expect, Cohen introduces an idea I had never considered but which so thoroughly resonated with my own observations that it's a wonder I'd never considered it this way before.

When I read the text of June Cohen's TED Talk, it not only struck me as original but also seemed profoundly astute. The title above was taken from the title of her TED Talk: The Rise of Social Media Is Really a Reprise.

In the early days of the Web, when I worked at HotWired, I thought mainly about the new. We were of the future, those of us in that San Francisco loft-champions of new media, new tools, new thinking. But lately I've been thinking more about the old--about those aspects of human character and cognition that remain unchanged by time and technology. Over the past two decades, I've watched as the Internet changed the way we think and changed the way we live. But it hasn't changed us fundamentally. In fact, it may be returning us to the intensely social animals we evolved to be. (EdNote: emphases mine)

Every day, hundreds of millions of people use the Internet to blog, tweet, IM, and Facebook, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And it is. The tools are new, but the behaviors come naturally. Because the rise of social media is a reprise, a return to the natural order.

When you take the long view-when you look at the Internet on an evolutionary timeline-everything we consider "old media" is actually very new. Books and newspapers became common only in the last two hundred years, radio and film in the last hundred, TV in the last fifty. If all of human history were compressed into a single twenty-four-hour day, media as we now know them emerged in the last two minutes before midnight.

Before that, for the vast majority of human history, all media were social media. Media were what happened between people. Whether you think of the proverbial campfire, around which group rituals were performed and mythologies passed on, or of simple everyday interactions (teaching, gossiping, making music, making each other laugh), media were participatory. 

The point, she concludes, is that what we’re witnessing now isn’t a fresh phenomenon. It’s not a groundbreaking surge in human potential, nor the collapse of thoughtful discussion, but instead a return to a more typical historical state. For a short time in the twentieth century, "media" was seen as content crafted by professionals for passive consumption by the masses. Together, we’ve been moving away from that concept.  

Is this part of the reason I've generally found television so off-putting since my junior year in high school?

Humans are innate storytellers, she says, and media have long served as the connective tissue binding our communities. However, in the twentieth century, mass media became so overwhelmingly one-sided that they crowded out other forms of engagement. The allure of television was so captivating, immersive, and isolating that it eroded older, interactive traditions like storytelling, music creation, and even family meals. While TV built a global audience, it dismantled the sense of village life in the process.

  

Then came the Internet. As soon as this technology emerged, we instinctively started rebuilding the types of content and communities we’re naturally drawn to. Content creation no longer required a multi-million dollar studio. YouTube video was a snap to produce and upload for sharing. 

Our ancestors thrived in tight-knit tribes, staying close to friends and keeping their children even closer. They rapidly shared critical, sometimes life-saving information and gathered around fires for rituals and storytelling that strengthened their bonds. Today, we see these same instincts at play. The first thing many of us do with new communication tools is reconnect with our tribe—sending photo emails to our parents or watching our grandchildren via private photo and video catalogs as they grow from infants to maturity.

The upside to social media is that it's accessible and (mostly) easy as pie. 

* * * Cue the ominous background transition music * * *

While I was preparing my thoughts for this blog post a few days ago I noticed the following post from a Facebook friend reminding me that not all is hunky dory in social media paradise, especially in those places where it intersects with the real world we physically live in. I asked for permission to share her experience and observations.

I went to a Tate Lecture at McFarlin at SMU featuring journalist Soledad O'Brien. I really like her and watched her on NBC and CNN many years ago. Anyhow, I was sitting in the 3rd balcony because I bought a General Admission ticket. It was terrible up there. I had a nice seat picked out and a few seconds before it started, a lady with a high hairdo sat in front of me so I moved. But I didn't know the lady down from her and now to the side of me on the lower row was going to be playing a game on her phone the whole night. Well, I shut her down by asking her to dim her phone or turn it off thank you. She did. Then a man in front of her had his going but he was reading about Soledad and turned it off pretty quickly. Then another lady kept checking her phone the whole lecture, but at least she had dimmed hers and was just quickly checking. Then when the lecture was over but the question and answer session was beginning, many people got up and left. I guess that's ok but I think it is in poor taste. During the questions (the lights were up), that first lady had dimmed her phone but was scrolling FB. LOL. I enjoyed the lecture but will pay for a decent ticket on the floor next time. My take is that people are addicted to their phones and are rude. But we all knew that. I just am surprised time and time again for some reason. --Denise Costello*

*Denise Costello is a connoisseur of the arts and literature, and an authority in all things Hemingway  

Flashback Friday: A 2009 Conversation with Twin Ports Writer/Editor/Publisher Ron Brochu

This is an interview I posted in 2009. While re-reading it recently it became apparent that the content here remains relevant, especially for the local writing and publishing scene. Ron is one of many local writers/publishers for whom I have high regard.

I'm still not sure how our paths first crossed, but it was our writing vocations for sure. What I do recall is that Ron Brochu was a journalist serious about his craft. Over the years we have met from time to time to compare notes on the writing life.

I'd like to imagine that all writers are like me, they respect anyone who writes and keeps writing even when it all feels so futile at times. Are we filling the world with too many words? Well, there are stories that still need to be told. And many that bear repeating to a new audience.

The original title for this blog entry was going to be "Journalism in the Internet Age and Other Adventures" because Ron has been in a perfect position to see the Internet's raw power as it has run roughshod over the newspaper industry. Take a minute and listen up.

EN: Can you briefly outline your career path as a writer?

Ron Brochu: It began at Denfeld High School and continued at UMD, where I became business manager, then entertainment editor and editor-in-chief at the campus newspaper.

I lived in Minneapolis after graduation, freelancing for the Southside Newspaper, then in 1978 took a trade magazine editing job at the former Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. During that time, I also freelanced for the Milwaukee Sentinel, Hermantown Star and Duluth Budgeteer. Using those bylines, I landed a part time reporting/photography job at the Superior Evening Telegram in 1984, where I eventually covered government and was assistant managing editor. Wayne Nelson recruited me to BusinessNorth in 1995, where I worked as managing editor but also learned pagination, graphics and a host of business software skills. Two years later, I moved to the Budgeteer News, where Murphy McGinnis Media moved us to a twice weekly, with dreams of becoming a daily. It became clear we lacked the resources to make that move, so I joined the competition when the Duluth News Tribune opened a Superior bureau in 1999. Worked there as a business writer for about two years, then moved to Duluth, where I covered education for a year before becoming city editor in charge of business, labor, health and environment reporters.

In 2005, the DNT sent me to the Telegram, which Knight Ridder had purchased two years earlier. My mission was to retrain and coach the newsroom staff until a permanent editor could be hired. I soon became that editor and remained in Superior until July 2008, when I was canned for exercising my right to free speech in a private e-mail to my bosses.

EN: Getting published is not that challenging for any determined writer producing sufficiently professional work. Getting paid for one’s writing seems a little more problematic. Why is this? Is it a supply and demand issue or something else?

RB: I think it’s more of a problem in Duluth than elsewhere. Compensation here is very low, likely because there are too many publications and they’re all strapped for cash.

As an HBJ editor, I was paying $250-$400 for trade magazine feature articles in 1978, and the Milwaukee Sentinel was paying me about $75 for features. At the same time, the Budgeteer was paying me $10 for each city council story. It hasn’t improved much since then. Last year, I was paying Telegram contributors anywhere from nothing to $50 for weekly columns – whatever they’d take. Contributors to the annual marketing supplement were getting up to $100 for feature stories, which still isn’t much.

EN: This (the overall economy) is just a very weak market. How has the publishing scene changed since the advent of the Internet?

RB: Print news publications have lost considerable advertising revenue. They’ve reacted by cutting staff and content, hurting their circulation revenue. Although many have developed a Web presence, few have developed innovative new products that generate sales comparable to advertising revenue. Newcomers have outsmarted print publishers on every front. A few examples include eBay, Craig’s List and Amazon.com. By having customers input orders, these web marketers have drastically reduced the cost of sales. Print publications, particularly newspapers, are strangled by high overhead.

Until they shed expensive labor and equipment costs, print will continue to struggle. The inexpensive Internet model is both a blessing and a curse. Although costs are virtually nonexistent, any idiot can launch a web page and pass off nonsense as truth. It’s extremely difficult to differentiate legitimate Internet journalism from rants and opinion.

EN: Sixties writers like Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe used fictional techniques to write about non-fiction themes. I remember a quote by Wolfe that the novel was dead due to reader interest in “reality” and “news.” He later wrote novels like Bonfire of the Vanities, and today bestseller novels continue to rake in millions. Do you think fiction will ever become obsolete?

RB: No. Even though truth can be stranger than fiction, it doesn’t flow as well. A good writer can always weave bits and pieces of truth into fiction that’s far more interesting. That’s not to say novels won’t go electronic, but they’ll definitely continue to exist.

EN: I spent a half hour trying to hook up my new HDTV box to a television set last night, and failed. Isn’t this move to digital television the craziest thing yet? Anything you’d like to add to what you have already written? What kind of feedback did you get to your story in the Reader.  

RB: For whatever reason, I don’t get much feedback to my Reader stories. The advantages of digital are overblown, in my opinion, at least for audio. I’m not a fan of unintelligible phone conversations, answering machines, MP3 recordings. We’re saving spectrum by cutting quality, then using the excess spectrum to broadcast more dumb sitcoms and even dumber reality shows. To me, the net gain is less than zero.

EN: As a former newspaper editor, what are the most shocking things you have seen that no one is talking about today?

RB: Governmental incompetence and waste top my personal list. Most of today’s reporters simply cover meetings and don’t take risks. For instance, they don’t dig into the early retirement benefit costs for police officers and firefighters. They haven’t revealed that Gary Doty has free lifetime medical benefits, even though they’re aware of it. They don’t write about the source of campaign contributions to Rep. Jim Oberstar or Rep. Dave Obey, and links between contributors and votes. In essence, they’re afraid to tackle beloved people and institutions. They’re as phony and incompetent as those they write about.
 

Could an AI Ever Fall in Love?

DreamAI generated illustration
based on my B&W "Dreamtiger"

Google has thrown its hat in the ring regarding an AI machine that is learning. Those who have been dabbling with the diverse range of AI applications in this mesmerizing tech space are paying close attention to rapid evolution. For some it is terrifying, for many it is remarkable. 

My grandmother often said that she grew up in the most amazing time in history as she witnessed the development of the automobile, radio, television, computers, manned flight, and ultimately the exploration of outer space. It seems that from a technology point of view our Boomer generation has witnessed some equally remarkable advances. The emergence of the Internet, genetic research, brain mapping and AI are a few of the many things that have caused our heads to spin.

Where they lead is anyone's guess.

It's amazing how much press ChatGPT has gotten the past six months and how many people have dabbled with it. Now, Google has thrown its hat in the right with its own intelligent machine. 

The other day I decided to ask the two AI cousins a question about love. Not human love, but whether an Artificial Intelligence could ever fall in love. Here were their replies.

Do you you believe an AI could ever fall in love?

Google Bard replies:

I don't know if an AI could ever fall in love. Love is a complex emotion that involves many different factors, including chemistry, attraction, and attachment. It's not clear if an AI could experience all of these things.

However, I do think that an AI could develop strong emotional attachments to humans. For example, an AI that is programmed to care for a child could come to love that child in a way that is similar to how a human parent loves their child.

It's also possible that an AI could fall in love with another AI. If two AIs are programmed to interact with each other in a way that simulates human relationships, they could develop feelings for each other that are similar to love.

Ultimately, I think it's impossible to say for sure whether an AI could ever fall in love. It's something that we may not know until we develop AIs that are even more sophisticated than the ones we have today.

Do you you believe an AI could ever fall in love?

The response from ChatGPT:

As an AI language model, I do not have personal beliefs or emotions, so I cannot fall in love or have opinions on whether an AI could fall in love.

However, it is important to note that the concept of "love" is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that encompasses many different aspects, including emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and cultural factors. While AI systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated and capable of performing tasks that were once thought to be exclusively within the realm of human intelligence, they still lack the ability to experience emotions and subjective states of consciousness in the way that humans do.

Therefore, while it is possible to program an AI system to simulate certain aspects of love, such as empathy, compassion, and attachment, it is unlikely that AI will ever truly experience the depth and complexity of human love.

* * * * 

So what do you think? Both made the observation that love is a complex emotion. I found it interesting that Bard explored the idea of the possibility of two intelligent bots potentially falling in love. Could this be an initial longing for love that springs from a certain existential isolation? "Only the lonely know the heartaches I've been through," Roy Orbison once sang. Will an AI experience loneliness one day and have that longing for connection? Last year I started a short story around this theme. The seed for that idea sprang from a short story by Isaac Asimov nearly 70 years ago. 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.  

Who owns the Information Highway? Here's what they were debating in 1994.

While cleaning out old files and folders from my garage I came across a fat folder of articles I'd photocopied during the early days of the Internet.  In about 30 seconds I surmised that there were some good seeds for stimulating those little grey cells we use to process ideas. The very first of these was an article by Kevin Cooke and Dan Lehrer of The Nation that appeared in the January/February 1994 edition of the Utne Reader. The piece was titled Who will own the information highway? 

The authors begin by sharing a story about Croatia, with a callout that reads, "Direct access to information is 'inherently politically subversive,'' says one longtime Nethead." The Croatian, who maintains a bulletin titled Zagren Diary, said his only link to the outside world is via email. (The article calls it electronic mail.) Kat explains that the Croatian government owns all the media there and they are prosecuting a group of journalists for treason.

The authors then note how the Russian Internet became a source of information about what was taking place during the 1991 coup. Likewise, students in China used the Internet to get the word out about what was happening there during Tiananmen Square. Reporters in China were gagged, but online newsgroups had the stories.

* * * 

The article segues into the power of the Internet, "the most powerful computer network on the planet because it is the biggest." How big? (And this is hilarious.) "It encompasses 1.3 million computers with Internet addresses used by up to 30 million people in more than 40 countries."

Can you imagine what they would have said if told that a single company in less than 30 years would have 2.8 million active monthly users by 2021? The authors correctly predicted that technology would be developed to make it easier for people who weren't nerds to get online. 

They also correctly put a spotlight on an issue that is still unresolved today. Who should control the Internet? Some argued that the Internet should belong to private businesses. The authors had issues with this. "By giving the private sector unregulated and monopolistic control over the Net's electronic connections, the government would in effect allow megacorporations like AT&T and Time Warner, who own the cable lines and manage what flows through them, to call the shots in the future."

Mega-big... like Apple (controlling what can be downloaded from iTunes) and Amazon (free to ban books that are not PC) and Google (free to harvest more data about you than you knew even existed) and Facebook (ditto).

In 1994 there were many voices raised expressing concern over censorship, and others expressing concerns about users being monitored. It doesn't seem like things have really changed.

The article ends with a confident declaration that issues related to access, pricing, censorship and redress of grievances would be resolved within five years. 27 years later and I'm personally a little less than optimistic.

* * * 

Hard to believe that Amazon was just a twinkle in its founder's eye back then, that Google would not appear til five years later, and that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was only a 10 year old kid at that time. Like, who would have thunk it?

C'est la vie.

Time Magazine Predicts Future Impact of the Internet on Politics

One of the best ways to see how challenging it is to predict the future is to read past predictions about what life would be like today. In the spring of 1995, Time Magazine published a special issue titled, WELCOME TO CYBERSPACE. 

While leafing through its pages last night an article titled Virtual Washington by Kevin Phillips caught my attention. The subhead reads: "The way is open for the total of overhaul of US politics." (Emphasis theirs.)

The first sentence seemed so prescient that I had to keep reading. How did they know there would be a pandemic?

Rain or shine, few Americans will go to the polls on election day in November 2020. 

No, they weren't predicting a pandemic. They were presuming that in 25 years the Internet will have changed the way we vote. The paragraph continues.

Most will vote by modem, telephone or mail--and overall participation will be much greater than just today. So will citizen interest, partly because four or five reasonably serious presidential candidates will be on the ballot, along with at least official at least one official referendum and perhaps half a dozen national advisory referendums. Enthusiasm for the democratic process will have reached a point where even Washington should be more popular.

Two hopeful? Perhaps. But it’s no pipe dream. Technology, whose image has suffered under a century's worth of dictators, Orwell and novels in a long Cold War, is becoming a key to the revitalization of US politics. The 1990s are witnessing technology's reemergence in the healthier role foreseen by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson as an enabler and propagator of democracy.

Let's unbundle these opening sentences. The author admits in the latter paragraph the possibility of being too hopeful. In the former he suggests that the two-party monopoly will be unbundled to include other players, other parties. He chose the number five because it represents a range of perspectives.

The history of the current two party system is such that countless elections are between the lesser of two evils. Hence the lack of enthusiasm for politics, especially Washington politics. If there were more parties, he reasons, more people would become engaged because at least one candidate might represent their views. 

When he enthusiastically mentions Thomas Jefferson, little does he know that 25 years later statues of the author of the Declaration of Independence will have been toppled and that Phillips' own good name may be cancelled for advancing this faux pas.

The next paragraph takes a swipe at Rush Limbaugh, the Simpsons, and "run amuck populism" which he believes will be left behind us when the new technology is rolled out in the 21st century.

Frankly, however, having been writing about the World Wide Web since its birthday, I have repeatedly stated that whatever you find in the "real world" will be found in that digital universe as well. Politics, populism and porn don't disappear when we beam up to cyberspace. Everything else from A to Z is here as well.

Phillips hilariously goes on to say that eight second soundbytes will become a thing of the past because technology will be more informative. I say hilariously because what is Twitter other than a infinitely multiplying universe of 8 second soundbytes? 6000 Tweets per second, which corresponds to 350,000 per minute and 500 million a day. (Just how determined are you to stay current up-to-the-minute on what's happening in the world?)

The author believed people would be more informed in the future, and there's a sense in which the possibilities of being informed exist, but Google and Facebook algorithms are designed to feed us what we already like to read, thereby concealing viewpoints that differ from our own and might enlighten us if we were aware of them.  

His optimism that our two party system would expand as a result of the Internet may never come to fruition. A great fear is that the two-party system may one day become one party alone, courtesy of Big Brother. As the Democrats celebrate their conquest of D.C. with the Executive and Legislative branches now under their control, their last target will no doubt be the Judicial branch. Let's watch and see what happens. Place your bets.

Alas, yes it would be nice to see a more equitable distribution of power, but there are few moments in history where those who have it have turned around and generously yielded it up.

* * *

Can Duluth Become the Next Sundance? Red Herring Meeting Showed How It Could Be Done

Everything starts somewhere. Ideas are planted, and if the soil is good and conditions right, the garden will bear fruit. It begins with a seed, which must be nurtured.

Saturday afternoon Katie Strand and Philip Gilpin of ITVFest. the Independent Television Festival, hosted an informational meeting at the Red Herring Lounge for the purpose of planting a seed in the hearts of a cross section of influential Duluthians with media connections. The concept makes sense, actually: to create a Mecca for independent television producers.

According to Philip Gilpin, "There are thousands of film festivals out there, but there is only one festival that focuses exclusively on independently produced episodic programming, and that’s ITVFest."

Viktoria Capek from Fox21

The first Duluth ITV Festival is already inked, so Gilpin and Strand were not selling the October event. Rather, their aim is to awaken Duluth to the possibility of becoming to independent television what Park City has become to independent film. There are seemingly countless film festivals, but since 1978 Sundance has become the most prestigious. The aim was to enable creative film makers to gain support outside of the stifling Hollywood film industry. The goal of Sundance was to showcase strictly American-made films and highlight the potential of independent film. Indirectly, the festival increased visibility for filmmaking in Utah.

In the same way, there are creative people working on television projects that just can't get past the "suits" in their Hollywood screening rooms. Having just finished reading a book about the Seinfeld show and how it nearly got the axe because the decision makers did not understand it, it's easy to see why there is a need for a system outside the system. (The book is called Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything.)

I've been to Park City a few times on business, and what you see there is a town that feels both quiet and quaint, un-sullied by the success of its film festival. Sundance may be internationally known, but it has not altered the character of the town. A lot of wealth has been generated, but no visible scars to the community.

* * * *

Katie Strand (L) and Philip Gilpin, Jr.

The "Aha" moment for me during this presentation was when Philip Gilpin noted the sea change that has occurred in media. Hollywood once held all the cards because they had the distribution channels nailed down. This is how they once controlled the movie industry. With the emergence ofYouTube, that has all changed.

All this has been turned on its head with the advent of the Internet. This is why Netflix has budgeted 7 billion dollars to produce movies in 2019, not just distribute them.

Just as Craigslist killed classified advertising in local newspapers (the damage from this revenue drain has been enormous), so has YouTube altered the media landscape. "There are currently 3 TV festivals in the U.S.," Gilpin stated. "YouTube has been a Hollywood disruptor in a very real way.

Major names are now creating innovative work, outside the Studio system. It’s a new era in television. If Duluth wants it, they can be what Park City is," he said, adding, "A major agency wants to invest a million dollars toward this."

At this point, Katie Strand presented,  beginning with a brief overview of her career. Strand noted that she is originally from Duluth and has spent the last 15 years in L.A. in television production, with production manager credits for Trading Spouses (2004) and producer for the show Nanking (2007). She's has a half dozen other impressive credits for various roles in the production of other programming including producer of the Ella Fitzgerald documentary for the Universal Music Group.

As a Hollywood insider, she began to notice that more and more work was being outsourced. Because of the competitive nature of the business, she reiterated a point that Gilpin said was being addressed in St. Paul. "Tax incentives are needed."

Duluth has much to offer. We have the talent and we have that invaluable Midwest work ethic.

Interested parties were scattered throughout the Red Herring from 2-4.

"Television is essentially about telling stories," she said. "Duluth will become the vetting system for television."

One of the first needs will be to create a resource guide so that television producers can use for calling in talent. Movies and television are created not by stars but by the 97% who are working behind the scenes.

Another facet of the project will be the creation of a Television Training Institute. Key pieces for implementing the vision include an infrastructure census and funding.

Mr. Gilpin indicated that ITV was created 14 years ago based on the conviction that television and the Internet would merge and become one. Hollywood became slow to adapt, hence the rise of independent television.

* * * *
The audience at Red Herring consisted of a virtual who's who of people involved in media in one capacity or another. Karen Sunderman, Brian Barber, Joellyn Rock, Blake Reistad, Andy Blessing, Bodhi Werver, for example. Emma Pardini (Great Lakes Aquarium) and Haley Hedstrom (Lake Superior Zoo) were among the many others with tangential interests. Richard Hansen, passionate founder of the DuSu Film Festival, SOLVE and original co-founder of the PROVE Gallery, helped promote this informational meeting on behalf of the community.

Viktoria Capek of Fox21 was on the scene early to capture footage on the event. (Trivia: Ms. Capek is new to our town, from our sister city Duluth, Georgia.) It's 22 below as I write this so that right now I've got Georgia on my mind.

The ITV Festival will be an interesting story to follow this year. One facet of this year's planned October event that wasn't mentioned, though alluded to, was the road construction taking place on Superior Street in front of the Zeitgeist. Mother Nature will have her say with regards to how complete the disruptive road project will be.

Certainly the other pieces look like they're in place. The community has much to offer. I will keep you posted.

Related Links
Duluth Snags National TV Festival
StoryWorld 3.0 : Topics, Talks & Titles — Philip Gilpin, Founder ITVFest

Navigating the Cyber Seas with Skipper Ev Williams on the Good Ship Medium

I think writers should work for readers instead of advertisers, so I’m voting with my credit card. I happily pay for products I love. Writing is no exception. ~ Andrew Courter

Ev Williams may not be the household name that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are, yet, but he's made an impact that touches households wherever there is Internet access and electricity. Born in '72, he's still just getting started, but look what this Nebraska farm boy has thus far accomplished.

He began his career in the marketing wing of the tech publisher O'Reilly Media and eventually got into writing computer code. While still in his 20s he co-founded a company called Pyra Labs to make project management software. One of the by-products was Blogger, one of the first apps for creating blogs, which was eventually sold to Google for a tidy little sum in 2003. (Ennyman's Territory was born four years later in 2007.) Williams was just 31 when he was getting recognition as a somebody to watch by MIT Technology Review and PC Magazine.

In 2007, around the time I began blogging Williams co-founded Twitter, which I began using a year later. The app was very powerful and candidate Obama was very quick to explore its capabilities. Eight years later another candidate exploited its power to effectively bypass a hostile media and speak directly to his fan/followers.

The entrepreneur's current passion is a new platform called Medium, a community of readers and writers that is intentionally ad-free. Though his vision for this new space has been criticized by some, it's apparent that Medium is being widely embraced by others.

In a NYTimes article titled "The Internet Is Broken": @Ev Is Trying To Salvage It, Mr. Williams elaborates on what he is trying to do on Medium. It's Utopian and another interesting experiment. Trying to create a community without the corrosive effects of advertising does not mean it has not shortcomings. In theory it's supposed to be better writing, better content, without the distractions of marketers. And yet, how can everyone be above average?

When I discovered Blogger I immediately recognized its power, and appreciated its ease of use. Twitter, though an entirely different user experience, likewise opened new possibilities of social interaction. Many of the great thinkers of our age have Twitter accounts and share with us what is on their minds.

Medium is like a separate universe. Or maybe a separate galaxy within the cyber-universe. It's less clear how to best utilize its capabilities, but I'm making an attempt to see how it works. There are purportedly 30 million monthly visitors, and based on the publication readerships a vast quantity of these are loyal readers and dedicated writers.

FWIW, @Ev is Ev Willams' Twitter handle and you can follow him here.

Related Links
The Battle for the Soul of Advertising Will Affect Everything
Ev Williams Explains the Medium Model

Everything Is Broken

Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Infobahn

THROWBACK THURSDAY
This article originally appeared in Zenith City Arts circa 1995.

Lost in Cyberspace

My first inkling of linking up with the Net emerged sometime in 1993. I knew I needed a modem, but in order to do this I had to upgrade my Mac since I was still driving my original 512Ke.

This done, with the help of some freelance income, I looked forward to Christmas when I could ask for a chunk of the payment toward a good fax/modem from Mr. Deep Pockets--as in Dad.

I had, unfortunately, some major writing projects I needed to tackle and I feared getting into Pioneer Netsurf Mode would endanger my productivity.

Fast forward to May 5, 1994. It is a Thursday, and I decide to visit Thinkman--a Net Surfer. He opens the gates and I get my first peek inside the realm I'd heretofore only dreamed of. Naturally I was hooked.

May 7, journal entry: Thots continue to orbit around the idea of Cyberspace and Connectivity. Made a purch. Will receive modem & AOL by next week. What will all this jargon do to mod lit?

Net travel becomes the primary pre-occupation in my thoughts. It is part of every conversation. I am bombarded by a whole battery of questions. How time consuming will it be? How long does it take to learn the protocol for getting around? How accessible is it, really? Will my anticipation lead to disappointment?

BUT A FUNNY THING WAS HAPPENING on my way to this peak experience. People around me were not all that excited. I mean, most of my workpace peers didn't even know what I was talking about. "Cyberspace? Infonet? Huh?"

Except a few. THEY knew. They knew something about it because they had seen it on television a few days earlier--a segment on one of those News Magazine-type programs that led them to believe the Infobahn was a world of terror where your worst nightmares come true... as stalkers and lurkers and hate mongers track you down, threaten your children and, generally, ruin your life.

Then there was the Newsweek cover story. Same week. Same fear-mongering. Is this really how it is out there?

After my first fifteen hours logged online here's my reaction: It's beautiful. Meeting people I could have never met any other way. A writer's group. Very open and friendly chat room experiences. A sympathetic, heartfelt discussion about Jackie O's sudden passing was in AOL's The Front Porch Room before it hit the news.

Of Flaming? What are these people talking about? I know, I'm a neophyte... so I speak out of ignorance. But how prevalent is it, really?

The whole of it seemed a little childish in my opinion. Sort of like the exaggerated caricatures of dope fiends in the film Reefer Madness.

Well, can you imagine if driving cars got this kind of publicity? Show pictures of bleeding heads hurled through windshields with a large banner that reads, 'THIS COULD BE YOU! DRIVING IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH1" M.A.D. ('Mericans Against Driving.)

My experience has raised some questions though. Does the major media respond this way because it feels threatened? Does it hope that the negative PR will prove detrimental to the movement? Did Michael Crichton's warnings to the National Press Club* send shivers up some spines? Or is this an addiction the new media has for which there is no cure until they are buried? Making people feel afraid must be an easier task than making people feel good.'

* * *

Now, here's the thing. You're interested in having a dialogue with peers at work about a book by Italo Calvino, or Jorge Luis Borges' use of labyrinths as a metaphor in his stories. Problem is, your peers do not read Calvino. In fact, most have never heard of Calvino, or Borges. They all watch television, and if you do not you are unable to meaningfully contribute to their perpetual break room revelry on the merits of the latest mini-series.

You suddenly discover a group of Borges fans discussing THIS VERY SUBJECT in a forum on America Online. This new expansion of your world is a blessing-and-a-half. Then you find that other interests of yours are also being discussing in various forums around the Matrix (another nickname for Cyberspace or the Net.) Who can blame you for wanting to spend a little more time with these people who share your interests? They, unlike others in your geographical sphere, understand where you are coming from. They appreciate your off-beat perspectives or narrow interests. And it feels good to know you are not isolated and alone in your views.  You feel affirmed, and just plain good about your world again.

* * *

A month has passed. My "flight log hours" in Cyberspace are adding up. Has my enthusiasm for this Big Adventure dissipated into mist? Hardly. List serves, Usenets, Veronica searches in Gopherspace... a universe has opened to me. And guess what? I've met some new friends--Mad Zeno, Therofax, Merlyn--as well as business contacts, including a literary agent who is interested in my work.

Nevertheless, the Media still seems intent on fear-mongering. A June 10 commentary by Bill Bishop in the local Duluth News Tribune again emphasized the down side of the Net. Cyberspace will ruin language and communication, he predicts, citing an obscure notation by a Harvard political scientist's study of communities in Italy.

Is this guy being a bit alarmist here, or what?

The future is upon us, folks. And if you'd rather buy buggy whip stock, have at it. My bet is on the technologies of Tomorrow. The wonders of Internet are available to all. And an open invitation is extended to anyone with a terminal.

Sure, there's hype. But there's some substance to the message of those Infobahn Evangelists, too. It's a New Frontier, calling for a new breed of Pioneers.

Columbus discovered the New World, Daniel Boone carved the Wilderness Road and historians have certified their importance by immortalizing their achievements in history books. Without a doubt, in the same way many of today's Cyberspace Pioneers will become legends in the history books of tomorrow.

If you want, you can be a part of it. Or wait... and watch your grandchildren read about it later.

# # # # 

I came across the 1994 article above while cleaning clutter out of my garage this past weekend. I thought it might make a suitable blog post for Throwback Thursday. How did you first discover the Internet?

*April 6, 1993, Michael Crichton predicted that our current perception of “mass media” would disappear within the next decade, and focused on the problems of the current media which has been charged with fabricating images to accompany news stories and with dealing in trivialities.

Bogus Tweet Reminds Us To Be Skeptical

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ DEPT.

This past week a bogus tweet reminded us again  of the old adage, "Don't believe everything you see." In an already tense week of terror news the AP Twitter account was hacked and someone tweeted that there had been explosions in the White House and President Obama was injured. The stock market immediately responded. It went down. A few seconds later the Associated Press tweeted that it was bogus. Their account had been hacked.

What's interesting in this Ad Age story is that people took action on what they saw and read. The market sank 1% in seconds. If what we believe impacts how people behave, we need to take extra care with regard to the ideas we embrace and our sources of information.

Nine years ago the subject of man's walk on the moon came up in our department at work. To my great surprise our web assistant at that time stated that he did not believe Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, that it was a hoax. I was somewhat chagrined. I've always known there were people who thought that way, but to meet one in person was a surprise. For me it's like stating that there is no such place as England or that Northern Lights are a hoax. These are simply facts.

But what happens when an apparently credible source makes a statement as fact that isn't a fact?

One survey in the early 1980's found that nearly 90% of all Americans believed that the government's account on the Kennedy Assassination, which determined that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, was false. Though distrust of our government did not begin with the Warren Commission, this was a fairly good indicator of the times. What's disturbing is not just what people won't believe, it is amazing the things people do believe. Some people who do not believe the "lone gunman" theory are ready to believe that not only were there more gunmen, but also that the CIA, FBI, mafia and half the State of Texas including Vice President Johnson were involved.

AN AGE OF DOUBT AND DISTRUST

How strange our world is today. Modern people have been trained to question everything, yet they believe the most foolish things. Yes, I can understand why someone might not believe the moon walk. We live in an age of falsification. Images, stories, urban legends, and cleverly devised myths abound, along with photos that have been doctored, stories that have no basis in fact. It is an era of deliberate obfuscation, an age of spin, of falsifying perceptions.

"Don't believe everything you see," is advice given wisely, but at the same time it can also unsettle us. Uncertainty makes us anxious. We like things to be firm, solid.

Uncertainty undermines confidence and leaves us feeling confused. When there are things at stake, we want to know what is true. But sometimes we simply can't know. We hear both sides of an issue and we don't know whom to trust.

This is even more the case in our internet age. Sometimes it's good to doubt. Then again, sometimes decisions need to be made and we have to make choices.

In the meantime... life goes on all around you. Enjoy the weekend, wherever you are. Be refreshed, and thrive!

The Cult of the Amateur

It's shaping up to be a beautiful day here, one that will be talked about for weeks to come. But let's not go there and discuss an issue that has been debated for decades but now has a new face.

In 2006 Andrew Keen produced an essay which went on to become a book about the destruction being wreaked upon professional journalism and culture by the proliferation of Internet content created by amateurs. A polemic, a diatribe, a venting of the spleen -- Keen's point is that all this proliferation of free content is costing us in a variety of unseen ways that are damaging to us in the long run.

The book, which I have never read but have read about on several occasions, reminds me of another book lamenting the damaging effects of pop culture, Edwin Newman's Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English? Newman was a news correspondent for NBC when he wrote this book in 1974. His carefully pointed analysis likewise laments the way things are going with regard to language and culture, though he is more concerned about language than what it was actually doing to the people whose jobs were involved in utilizing it.

Keen's book is decidedly aimed at bashing one of the foundational tenets of the Internet: "Information wants to be free." Keen notes that "free" always costs something, and to some extent he's right. For example, Duluth, MN has something like 29 "free" public parks. I had lunch this week with someone involved with the city who reminded me that free public parks are expensive to maintain.

For the longest time I have been watching the magazine industry as it strives to transition to the Internet. Some are doing it better than others. Yes, there are pressures being placed on journalism, but think of all the writers who have finally found a voice, who can own their own soapbox and not be squeezed out from publication and kept away from readers because they failed to have suitable credentials. Every writer knows that the publishing game was in need of an overhaul. You jump through hoops and hope somehow to bypass the gatekeepers so a managing editor will pick up your query and read it while they still have half their brain engaged after shuffling through 3,000 other queries.

If Keen's rant shows up in audio format at our library I will certainly make an effort to give it a fair shake. In the meantime, I will read the reviews. Here are some of Olly Buxton's comments at Amazon.com:

Since Andrew Keen is so instinctively dismissive about amateur contributors to the Internet - people like me - it's hardly surprising that I should instinctively dismiss his book, so let me declare an interest right away: I like Web 2.0. I've been a contributor to it - through Amazon customer reviews, Wikipedia, discussion forums, MySpace, Napster and so on - for nearly a decade now, and I've followed the emergence of the political movement supporting it, exemplified by writers such as Larry Lessig and Yochai Benkler, with some fascination. and no, I've never made a dime out of it (though I have been sent a few books to review, not including this one).

Andrew Keen is that classic sort of British reactionary: the sort that would bemoan the loss of the word "gay" to the English language, and regret the damage caused by industrial vacuum cleaners on the chimney sweeping industry. His book is an impassioned, but simple-minded, hearkening to those simpler times which concludes that our networked economy has pointlessly exalted the amateur, ruined the livelihood of experts, destroyed incentives for creating intellectual property, delivered to every man-jack amongst us the ability - never before possessed - to create and distribute our own intellectual property and monkeyed around mischievously with the title to property wrought from the very sweat of its author's brow.

Keen thinks this is a bad thing; but that is to assume that the prior state of affairs was unimpeachably good. You don't have to be a paranoid Chomskyite to see the pitfalls of concentrated mass media ownership (Keen glosses over them), or note that the current intellectual property regime - which richly rewards a few lucky souls and their publishers at the expense of millions of less fortunate (but not, necessarily, less talented) ones, isn't the only way one could fairly allocate the risks and rewards of intellectual endeavour.

Well, there you have it. Hope you'll now get out there and enjoy your weekend. Make it a good one.

Viral Loop and My Early Forays Into Cyberspace

I'm currently listening to an audio version of the book Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today's Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. Before getting to the meat of his story, NYU journalism professor Adam Penenberg begins with a little background on what a viral business model looks like. The Ponzi story of 1919-1920 is quite interesting. So is the Tupperware story, with its end result being that there are probably very few homes in America without one of Mr. Tupper's wares.

This is all setup for the story of the Internet itself, how it went from being a geek world to becoming something totally pervasive, now woven into the fabric our modern life.

I'm not that far into the book so I do not know whether Penenberg will present it this way, but the promotional reviews about the book sure make it seem like we should all be gazillionaires by now, if only we understood how viral ideas can grow and make us rich, and how the Internet makes viral marketing easier than ever.

Anyways, as I listened to the story of the early days of the World Wide Web, I couldn't help but think about what I was doing at the time. I got my first Mac 512ke in 1987. These were the days when geeks passed around discs of Shareware, with programs you could try out, many for fun, some for serious. At some point (maybe around 1990?) I was introduced to a program called Hyperstack or Hypercard. It was a way of creating pages that you could jump to in non-sequential order. Little did I know that in a few short years there would be a global hyper-stack that enabled users to jump all over the cyber-universe in a non-sequential manner.

In the early 1990's there were several fledgling companies that used the networked world to disseminate information and create communities. One early champion of this realm was CompuServe. Another was America Online. A telephone line and a modem would connect users to hundred of thousands, and eventually millions, of other users who formed communities and used the service for a variety of purposes. For example, in 1992-94 I was researching and writing a series of articles on ethical issues in terminal health care. To gain new points of view I initiated discussion groups on the topic, and ended up with many insights I had previously been unaware of for my article on the "Pros and Cons of Doctor Assisted Suicide." The power of this new medium was quickly evident for journalists.

In the spring of 1994, because I could see that the Internet was going to be a force, I took a one day class at the University of MN, Duluth called Internet: Introduction to the Global Information Resource. My suspicions regarding the power of the Net were confirmed when I got home that night and found that article abstracts I'd found at libraries in Berlin and Pisa were on my Mac SE, successfully downloaded from across the seas.

At the time, the World Wide Web had not really gone mainstream. The only browser was Mosaic, a remarkable piece of programming that enabled people to see images and colors and not simply lines of text. The instructor at UMD was absolutely gaga over this "new thing" (not exactly raving, but fairly excited) but I was a little less so. The university had a T-1 line and super fast connections to the Net, and even so the program loaded so slowly you could take a bathroom break while the page loaded. Knowing how most of the world was on a telephone line with a 14 kb modem, I assumed this was not going to catch on all too quick.

But I was wrong. That fall Mark Andreesen, who was instrumental in writing the code for Mosaic, had outdone himself and led a Silicon Valley team that produced the Netscape browser... and, as Penenberg details, the rest is history.

As for me, I soon purchased a book called How to Learn HTML in Two Weeks, and believed that it was possible. Sure enough I was soon building a website. In late 1994 I launched my first pages, calling it Ennyman's Territory. The "ennyman" moniker came about like this. When I first signed up for AOL, I had to choose a "handle" and I wanted something cool, a little defining, but something I could identify with. I made a list of five names. One of them was SeaLion, thinking it played off my first name (Leon) and said something about swimming the cyber seas. The name was already taken. So were the other four.

AOL had a way of helping indecisive people select a name. The program suggested enewman4042, which is the first initial of my middle name plus my last name and the numerals from my address. No one else was likely to have this the AOL team surmised. I began typing en... and then thought of Everyman, the common man, and took a stab at the name Ennyman. A spontaneous impulsive whim. This was accepted and I've been ennyman ever since.

In 1995-6 I wrote a column for Printwear magazine called Screen Net, which was my way of helping others learn about the basic features of the new technology. I wrote articles like "What Is A Browser" and "The Top 25 Search Engines" in order to learn as much as I could about this emerging world.

Penenberg's book reminded me of how early I was to have staked a claim for real estate on the world wide web. At the time there really weren't that many websites, relatively speaking. Yes, there were surfers, but in 1995 a simple site like my own could catch the attention of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and be tagged one of the Top Ten Sites in Minnesota. (I was even sent an icon to wear on my home page.) I'm pretty sure that what caught their eye was my Virtual Gallery featuring crayon art by Don Marco and Jeffrey Robert. For some reason, even though I have removed this section from my current website, it still remains out there somehow, like a remote ghost town that has yet to crumble and can still be found on the fringes of the prairie.

Back then, a website was a novelty and easy to draw attention to. Now, they're swallowed up in a cyber-galactic universe of blogs, Facebook pages, and whole continents of content competing for eyeballs. Where it goes from here is anyone's guess.