There’s a face on Mars.
Ever since Viking took this photo fifty years ago, some people have been sure–certain–that it clearly shows a face on the planet’s surface. Of course, once we had a high resolution image from a later mission, all resemblance to a face went away.
Human beings need a story, especially when we’re trying to understand something we haven’t already classified. And so we see faces in clouds, in grilled cheese sandwiches and on other planets.
We do it with song lyrics that don’t make sense and with technology we don’t really understand as well.
Some of the drivers are:
Fear of the unknown.
Novelty and the arrival of something new.
Unpredictable inputs that seem to assert some sort of intentional action and agency.
It’s no wonder, then, that LLMs and other forms of AI lead to waves of pareidolia. We ascribe a gender, a tone of voice and most of all, intent to these computer programs that are doing nothing but math. We imagine that they are lying to us, manipulating us and getting ready to take over the world.
If imagining that there’s a little person inside helps you use the tool better, that’s fine.
But made up stories that we invented to deal with our fear often make it worse. They distract us from the hard work of understanding what’s actually happening.
When the details become more clear, we’ll then have to unlearn all the personification we insisted on learning.
The simple rule: Nine shortcuts take longer and are less productive than simply doing the work the right way the first time.
When we look for one-quick-tip and the lazy hack, we’re wasting time we could have spent on the direct path instead.
When a shortcut becomes the best way to do something, it ceases to be a shortcut. It’s simply the direct path. It’s easy to find satisfaction in finding the unexplored shortcut that gives us a temporary advantage. However, it won’t last long, and the time spent looking for it is a distraction.
Sit down and type. Stand up and lead. Simply begin.
As soon as we see that notice, the current model gets less good.
It was fine yesterday, but simply being told that better is available seems to tarnish something that worked.
Perhaps “compared to what” isn’t always the best question.
If you are struggling to get the word out, if customer traction is elusive, if you are always hustling for a little bit of attention, if it feels like you need to spend more money on promotion…
It might be that you skipped the important part.
Marketing isn’t hype. Marketing is making a product or service that matters.
If you’re struggling selling the thing you made, it’s worth reconsidering the audience, the promise and the change you seek to make–and then be honest with your team about whether your offering is actually remarkable, or just the best you could do with what you had.
Because the market doesn’t care how hard you’re trying.
The announcement of the planned Netflix acquisition of Warner Bros, one of the last remaining major studios, is shedding light on a key issue we often overlook when thinking about culture, creativity and creation.
Carriage is the term for the method that books, movies, TV shows and other media get from the producers to the public. It’s about who controls user access to the medium.
Until recently, bookstores were a largely open system. Any publisher had a chance to get any book into any bookstore, sometimes with prime placement and promotion.
Radio stations offered carriage to record labels. When labels tried to bribe the program directors (‘payola’) the power of this carriage was clear and the practice was banned. Even so, major record labels had power because they, and they alone, had a chance to get a record heard and played.
Throughout the 1930s, film production in the US was controlled by about eight studios, and five of the studios had their own movie theaters. With this advantage, they could force the independent movie theaters to take a block of movies, exerting control over what got seen.
It’s this control of carriage that amplifies power. With just three major TV networks, an independent producer of shows had almost no chance to have their shown seen without their participation. Middlemen control carriage, and that gives them the key to the gate.
The internet was supposed to change the way creators dealt with carriage issues. If you wanted someone to visit your website, no one could step in the way. This was a breakthrough, the first in a century. Songs, books, videos–put them up and bring your own audience.
Of course, once Google gained traction, they offered to engage in thinly veiled payola–pay Google for search ads, and traffic would come to your site. Don’t pay, no play.
Amazon started out as an everything store, treating all books–and then everything else they sold–evenly. If an author or publisher could get the word out, Amazon ensured that the item would be found. Widespread and open carriage of ideas and products. Alas… if you’ve noticed that the Amazon shopping experience has gotten a lot worse, it’s because they’re maximizing their ad profits (payola) and burying (taking efficient carriage away from) those that won’t pay or partner.
And Netflix?
Hollywood is petrified. If Netflix further integrates into production, as well as buying another large library of previously produced content, they fear that there will only be one streaming platform, and, with control over carriage, one company will control what gets made and what gets seen. It doesn’t really matter how many studios there are–it’s not hard to start one–what matters for the future is that carriage, and the profits that go with it, are available to anyone with a studio.
The solution, one that Netflix would probably benefit from, is to offer to adopt more of a YouTube approach to carriage–allow anyone who produces video content to show it on Netflix. Pay them based on views. As we’ve seen with YouTube, creators don’t mind if there’s just one place to be seen, as long as carriage is available fairly.
Creators of everything–from Linkedin posts to podcasts to documentaries–need to think hard about carriage. Attention is one of our precious resources, and our culture benefits when it’s not centrally controlled.
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