Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

Esoterica

The Hallmark Flaw of the Mass Media

Vin

Ask historians to say when the Industrial Era began and they will cite dates in the 18th or 19th centuries when a factory powered by hydraulics or steam engine was first constructed in their nation. I think they’re wrong. The start of the Industrial Era shouldn’t be defined by what powered mechanisms of mass production, but by the invention of such a mechanism itself. In approximately 1454, the entrepreneurial metallurgist Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press: the world’s first mass production device. Prior to Gutenberg, books were rarities, affordable only by the church or the rich. A typical scribe or monk in a scriptorium could copy by hand two to four pages daily, laboriously producing a simple book in three to six months. If the book was also ‘illuminated’ with illustrations or decorations, it could take up to three years. Gutenberg’s press used metal type characters that were set in a mirror-image analog of the page to be printed. This was then inked and pressed onto paper. A two-man team operating the press lever or crank could imprint hundreds of pages daily, enough to produce hundreds of books per month, more than a lifetime’s production by a scribe or monk. The societal effects of Gutenberg’s press are often cited as ending the Middle Ages and beginning the Modern Era. This first mass production device fundamentally improved how human beings distribute, store, and trust information. Nearly half a millennium later, Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of wireless broadcasting markedly extended the immediacy and reach of information. He converted electrical teletype signals into analog electromagnetic waves of radiation that could be instantly received across huge distances. The later additions of microphones and photovoltaic sensors and cathode receiver tubes resulted in radio and television. From these analog production and distribution technologies of the Industrial Era arose the theories, doctrines, business models, products, services, and practices that are now colloquially known as the Mass Media. Their industries globally generate US$3 trillion in gross revenues annually. The Present Since the mid-1990s, the Mass Media industries have created online versions of their Industrial Era products and services ‘converged’ into multimedia websites or ‘streaming’ services. The industries hoped that consumers and advertisers would utilize the websites the same way (i.e., as often and thoroughly) as consumers had printed products or broadcast services during the 20th Century. The industries hoped that the same Industrial Era business models would […]

Bezos & Bogeymen

Vin

Don’t Get Distracted from the Existential Problem In 1998 when I first began questioning if the Mass Media industries would have a future, the senior vice president of marketing at largest daily newspaper in Texas tried to reassure me, “People have been using newspapers for centuries, so we expect they will for centuries more.” What immediately crossed my mind was that horses had been a prime means of transportation for millennia, so people living 100 years ago probably thought this meant that horses would still be a prime means of transportation in future centuries, too. How wrong they were! Within 30 years of 1898, horses had disappeared as a prime means of transportation in most developed nations. Not just in Texas! Last week in this newsletter’s first edition, I stated that its focus is the existential threat now confronting the Mass Media industries as the Industrial Era wanes and the Informational Era dawns. What is this threat? Is it truly existential? Or am I being over-dramatic or otherwise hyperbolic? No, I can justify what I here state. Twenty years ago, the Mass Media industries was riding high. Many of those industries announced recorded earnings during the first half-decade of the new millennium. Although the ‘Great Recession’ then struck, those industries reasonably expected to restore and resume those record earnings soon afterward. However, that didn’t happen. Since 2007, almost all sectors of the Mass Media industries have seen plummeting audiences (i.e,. readership, listenership, or viewership); advertising clienteles; and gross revenues (turnover) when such numbers are adjusted for population growth or inflation. Some of the declines have been spectacular, an example of which I’ll describe below and in subsequent newsletters. Starting next week, I’ll likewise write about he categorical reasons for these declines. However, in this second edition of the Digital Deliverance newsletters, let’s focus on the proximate reason why the Mass Media industries are not only in rapid decline but actually in danger of extinction, a tangible problem already creating troubling societal effects. What is this existential threat? Some myopic pundits call it the ‘Missing Business Model’ problem. During the past 30 years, literally billions of consumers worldwide have begun using personal computer-mediated technologies, rather than printed products or broadcast services, as their primary means of obtaining news, entertainment, and other information. Yet during that time, the Mass Media industries unfortunately haven’t been unable to devise a business model or models […]

The ‘Threat’ of Chinese Auto Manufacturers

Vin

The last hútòng (胡同) I explored was in the year 2000, in the southern suburbs of Beijing. Many of its residents still wore drab green or grey uniform ‘Mao’ suits. A hútòng is a neighborhood of streets and narrow alleys separating blocks of one- or two-story traditional Chinese multi-family houses containing common courtyards. You’ll rarely find a hútòng in any populous city in China. During the past quarter century — yes, it’s been that long, most hútòngs have been razed and replaced by towering modern apartment blocks. Hundreds of thousands of hútòngs gone. During that time, China’s economy has advanced 600%; 850 million of China’s  1.4 billion people were lifted above the poverty line,  and by 2030 (only four years) it is predicted by Western analysts that 27% of Chinese adults with have college educations — that same percentage as Germans. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has grown 310% since 2000, the number Americans living under the poverty line has increase from 12.2% to 15.9%, and literacy has dropped to 79% to 80% — meaning that one out of every five Americans struggles to read, 21% are functionally illiterate, and half of the population reads at no better than a sixth-grade level (an 11 to 12-year old level). These declines have demonstratively shifted American politics. In the nearly four decades 1988, only two Republicans have won the White House: George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Thoughtful, probative, and politically experienced Republican nominees as Robert Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney lost elections. Starting in 2008 to compensate, the Republican party largely stopped campaigning about policies that compete with those of Democrat candidates and began competing about what it calls ‘cultural’ ‘ issues: the Starbucks coffee chain no longer printing ‘Merry Christmas’ on its cups, Barack Obama wearing a brown suit, there being ‘transgendered’ athletes (perhaps hundreds of them within a nation of more than 300 million people!) competing in scholastic athletic games, about immigrants allegedly eating natives’ pets, wind turbines allegedly causing cancer, scientifically-proven human-caused climate change being a ‘hoax’, alleged Jewish ‘space lasers’ causing forest fires, about the 66% of Americans who are Christians allegedly being discriminated against by the majority of Americans, and other dingbat conspiracy theories and what I call ‘conservative twinkie’ issues that rile the gullible and illiterate among Americans into voting for whomever deceitfully utters such lies. Hence, a minority of American voters (i.e., slightly under […]

Click Singing in Xhosa

Vin

Yesterday, I posted the Ndlovu Youth Choir of the Republic of South Africa singing Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody in the Isizulu language, and I noted that language’s click consonants which are common to Bantu languages but virtually unknown in Indo-European or East Asia languages. Enjoy this six-minute video of South African singer Siki Jo-Ann singing in Xhosa language of South Africa, the second most popular native language in that nation, a wonderful language in which clicking is most prominent. It starts with a two-minute humorous skit between a white South African and a black South African joking about those clicks. Siki Jo-Ann enters at the two and one-half minute mark, singing the clicks of Xhosa.

Zulu Queen

Vin

And why not Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody sung in Isizulu by the Ndlovu Youth Choir of the Republic of South Africa? isiZulu (note the lower-case initial i) is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. It’s one of the Republic of South Africa’s official language, spoken by a quarter of that nation’s population, and was the native language of Nelson Mandela. I first heard it during 2009 while working at Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. You’ll hear in it some of the click consonants common to Bantu languages, a common sound unheard of in Indo-European or the languages of East Asia. (Tomorrow, I think that I’ll post a video clip of Siki Jo-Ann who sings in the Xhosa language of South Africa, the second most popular native language in the nation, a wonderful language in which clicking is most prominent.)

Welcome to the 21st Century: the Bulletproof Volvo

Vin

Stuck in traffic? Worried about those other drivers or pedestrians? For decades, Volvos has been renowned for automotive safety in case of collisions. Yet why not purchase a Volvo armored against terrorists, MAGA cultists (i.e., we know they don’t purchase Volvos), and psychopathic citizens? Yes, to fit your modern lifestyle, you too can purchase a large family SUVs XC60 and XC90 with bulletproof protective armoring. These vehicles, now available from any Volvo dealers, are ballistically certified to NIJ IIIA standards in combination with VPAM 2009, the extensive 360° armoring can help protect all occupants in the event of a security threat. Available in both electric and hybrid gasoline/electric versions, these cars are available both to private and corporate customers.

America Ranks Behind 20 Other Nations in its Citizens’ Inability to Pay for a Healthy Diet

Vin

So, why has the United States government, led by a convicted multiple felon, reduced the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the country’s largest nutrition assistance program? More than 42 million Americans use the SNAP program, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. According to that department , more than 62% of SNAP participants are in families with children, and more than 38% are in working families. The State of New Mexico has the largest share participating in SNAP, with some 21% of the population helped by the program. The program provides crucial support for families with low-paying jobs, low-income older adults, people with disabilities and others. The answer is Republican politicians’ evil disregard for struggling citizens. Lack of healthy nutrition for those citizens is an actual problem. Yet that problem isn’t as important as are continuing cuts to the wealthiest citizens’ taxes. It more important to Republican politicians that the small minority (i.e., fewer than 5 percent of the population) of citizens, who can easily afford adequate nutrition, pay ever smaller taxes, then are the actual struggles of a larger number of citizens in need of adequate nutrition. After all, didn’t doomed Queen Marie Antoinette say to her to struggling French families with low-paying jobs and low-income French senior citizens who couldn’t afford bread, “Let them eat cake!” Today’s MAGA Republican party would be proud of her!

Find a Great Deal via GulagAdvisor!

Vin

Perhaps it will be like the ‘Hotel California’ in that eponymous song by the Eagles: ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” North Korean murderous dictator Kim Jong-Un and his family open his nation’s Wonsan-Kalma seaside tourist resort town. Where might tourism come from to fill the resort town’s 20,000 hotel beds? Russia seems to be the likely answer. Western economic sanctions against Russia for its disastrous invasion of the Ukraine has greatly limited the nations in which Russians can vacation (Egypt, Dubai, and Thailand are among the nations that still allow them). Frequent flyer Ben Schlappig offers some thoughts at Wonsan-Kalma.