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The Attention Economy

[ed. "What mattered was results". Well, not always... not here at Duck Soup, anyway. No ad supported hosting, no Google Analytics, no Tumblr sharing/following, Facebook likes, comments section or anything else of the sort. Just a small sampling of the cultural detritus that washes over us every day. I do admit to having a slight sense of ennui (is that the right word?) for people/sites that are so metric-driven, but understand the business imperative (and opportunity) that would drive such a perspective. Money and attention aren't everything.]

How many other things are you doing right now while you're reading this piece? Are you also checking your email, glancing at your Twitter feed, and updating your Facebook page? What five years ago David Foster Wallace labelled ‘Total Noise’ — ‘the seething static of every particular thing and experience, and one’s total freedom of infinite choice about what to choose to attend to’ — is today just part of the texture of living on a planet that will, by next year, boast one mobile phone for each of its seven billion inhabitants. We are all amateur attention economists, hoarding and bartering our moments — or watching them slip away down the cracks of a thousand YouTube clips.

If you’re using a free online service, the adage goes, you are the product. It’s an arresting line, but one that deserves putting more precisely: it’s not you, but your behavioural data and the quantifiable facts of your engagement that are constantly blended for sale, with the aggregate of every single interaction (yours included) becoming a mechanism for ever-more-finely tuning the business of attracting and retaining users.

Consider the confessional slide show released in December 2012 by Upworthy, the ‘website for viral content’, which detailed the mechanics of its online attention-seeking. To be truly viral, they note, content needs to make people want to click on it and share it with others who will also click and share. This means selecting stuff with instant appeal — and then precisely calibrating the summary text, headline, excerpt, image and tweet that will spread it. This in turn means producing at least 25 different versions of your material, testing the best ones, and being prepared to constantly tweak every aspect of your site. To play the odds, you also need to publish content constantly, in quantity, to maximise the likelihood of a hit — while keeping one eye glued to Facebook. That’s how Upworthy got its most viral hit ever, under the headline ‘Bully Calls News Anchor Fat, News Anchor Destroys Him On Live TV’, with more than 800,000 Facebook likes and 11 million views on YouTube.

But even Upworthy’s efforts pale into insignificance compared with the algorithmic might of sites such as Yahoo! — which, according to the American author and marketer Ryan Holiday, tests more than 45,000 combinations of headlines and images every five minutes on its home page. Much as corporations incrementally improve the taste, texture and sheer enticement of food and drink by measuring how hard it is to stop eating and drinking them, the actions of every individual online are fed back into measures where more inexorably means better: more readers, more viewers, more exposure, more influence, more ads, more opportunities to unfurl the integrated apparatus of gathering and selling data.

Attention, thus conceived, is an inert and finite resource, like oil or gold: a tradable asset that the wise manipulator auctions off to the highest bidder, or speculates upon to lucrative effect. There has even been talk of the world reaching ‘peak attention’, by analogy to peak oil production, meaning the moment at which there is no more spare attention left to spend.

by Tom Chatfield, Aeon |  Read more:

Image: onathan Siegel/Getty

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4chan Camgirl Loli-Chan Grows Up

Before there were sexpots, there were coffee pots. The first internet celebrity was a first-come/first-served coffee machine shared by computer scientists at Cambridge University in England. The faculty members who sat next to the machine could smell a new pot as soon as it was prepared, which allowed them to bogart the brew.

In 1991, the faculty set up a camera that would allow people sitting in other rooms to view the coffee pot remotely. They aimed to level the playing field. But after they posted a link to the Trojan Room Coffee Cam online, it received 2 million hits.

It was proof that people will watch anything, even boiling water.

The first legitimate camgirl came five years later. Jennifer Ringley was a pretty blond Pennsylvanian who set up a live stream from her dorm room at Dickinson College. The 20-year-old broadcast herself 24/7, chatted with fans on message boards, and kept publicly viewable diaries. Ringley told the BBC that 100 million people would log on each week to watch her muse about romance and perform mundane tasks. She would have sex on camera, but Jennicam wasn't explicitly pornographic; it was a documentation of her life.

Although Ringley and other early camgirls of the era were in their 20s, camgirls slowly began getting younger. "It [became] about this fey little girl, Hello Kitty kind of thing," says Theresa Senft, author of a book on the subculture called Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks. "They all seem[ed] to have those big eyes and pale skin and to fit the bill in a much more cartoony way than a pinup way."

The story of Loli begins with a 15-year-old girl named Olivia, who became known as Cracky-chan online. At 2:17 in the afternoon on January 6, 2005, an image appeared on 4chan of an unconventionally beautiful girl with a red-painted nose. Looking coyly into her webcam, she flashed a simple message written on her upturned palm: "Sup 4chan."

Originally intended as a site to share anime and manga images when it was launched in 2003, 4chan is now known for its affiliation with the hacktivist group Anonymous (whose members somehow got 4chan's founder, Christopher Poole, voted Time's Most Influential Person of 2008 by manipulating the poll), its memes (pretty much anything that's ever gone viral began there), and its offensive content (as Senft, the academic, said: "For adults, 4chan is sort of the ninth circle of Hell.") (...)

Just as Ringley inspired a legion of "livestreamers" who would spend years of their lives on cam, Cracky encouraged a new generation of artsy and insecure millennials to become live-action cartoon characters on the internet. She became the de facto figurehead of a splinter subculture. Today, a handful of fansites are dedicated to bringing her out of hiding. The homepage of one site, Dear Olivia, reads like an open letter: "This page is to show you how much you have impacted our lives. We want you to know that we care about you. We hope you care about yourself! From having fun imitating your great sense of style, to becoming obsessed with various perceptions of you... we have met friends and people with similar interests because of you."

Young girls, too, became obsessed with Cracky. Instead of plastering teen heartthrobs or boy bands across her childhood room, a 13-year-old Loli would Scotch-tape images of Cracky on the walls. She says that as an adolescent, she had sexual fantasies about the mysterious girl but also dreamed that one day she'd garner as much adulation. Most of the friends she has today are fellow "Cracky-fags" whom she Skypes and sometimes visits. "There's a whole religion around her," Loli explains. "People call her the Sky Queen."

Why did the Cracky phenomenon take off? "Because her photos weren't slutty, these guys elevated her to some sort of holy figure," offers Camel, who posted nude pictures of herself as a preteen after suffering sexual abuse and now studies business at a Canadian university.

Camel explains that a Chan name is given by the online community to only the most beloved camgirls and that hundreds strove for that designation between 2005 and 2007. She didn't make the cut. "In the end, I wasn't cute enough and didn't put enough presentation into my photos [to earn a Chan name]," Camel says. "And thank goodness for that."

by Allie Conti, Miami New Times |  Read more:

Image: Liam Peters

Will Work for Inspiration

[ed. Hey San Francisco, Seattle, et al., here's looking at you.]

I'm writing this in Venice, Italy. This city is a pleasantly confusing maze, once an island of fortresses, and now a city of tourists, culture (biennales galore) and crumbling relics. Venice used to be the most powerful city in Europe – a military, mercantile and cultural leader. Sort of like New York.

Venice is now a case study in the complete transformation of a city (there's public transportation, but no cars). Is it a living city? Is it a fossil? The mayor of Venice recently wrote a letter to the New York Review of Books, arguing that his city is, indeed, a place to live, not simply a theme park for tourists (he would like very much if the big cruise ships steered clear). I guess it's a living place if you count tourism as an industry, which I suppose it is. New York has its share of tourists, too. I wave to the doubledecker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction?

New York was recently voted the world's favorite city – but when you break down the survey's results, the city comes in at No 1 for business and only No 5 for living. Fifth place isn't completely embarrassing, but what are the criteria? What is it that attracts people to this or any city? Forget the business part. I've been in Hong Kong, and unless one already has the means to live luxuriously, business hubs aren't necessarily good places for living. Cities may have mercantile exchange as one of their reasons for being, but once people are lured to a place for work, they need more than offices, gyms and strip clubs to really live.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration. Sometimes, that possibility of serendipitous encounters – and I don't mean in the meat market – is the principal lure. If one were to vote based on criteria like comfort or economic security, then one wonders why anyone would ever vote for New York at all over Copenhagen, Stockholm or some other less antagonistic city that offers practical amenities like affordable healthcare, free universities, free museums, common spaces and, yes, bike lanes. But why can't one have both – the invigorating energy and the civic, intelligent humanism? (...)

The city is a body and a mind – a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and information. Knowledge and creativity are resources. If the physical (and financial) parts are functional, then the flow of ideas, creativity and information are facilitated. The city is a fountain that never stops: it generates its energy from the human interactions that take place in it. Unfortunately, we're getting to a point where many of New York's citizens have been excluded from this equation for too long. The physical part of our city – the body – has been improved immeasurably. I'm a huge supporter of the bike lanes and the bikeshare program, the new public plazas, the waterfront parks and the functional public transportation system. But the cultural part of the city – the mind – has been usurped by the top 1%.

by David Byrne, CreativeTime Reports |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

How I Bought Drugs on the Dark Net

Dear FBI agents, my name is Carole Cadwalladr and in February this year I was asked to investigate the so-called "dark net" for a feature in this newspaper. I downloaded Tor on to my computer, the anonymous browser developed by the US navy, Googled "Silk Road drugs" and then cut and pasted this link http://silkroadvb5piz3r.onion/ into the address field.

And bingo! There it was: Silk Road, the site, which until the FBI closed it down on Thursday and arrested a 29-year-old American in San Francisco, was the web's most notorious marketplace.

The "dark net" or the "deep web", the hidden part of the internet invisible to Google, might sound like a murky, inaccessible underworld but the reality is that it's right there, a click away, at the end of your mouse. It took me about 10 minutes of Googling and downloading to find and access the site on that February morning, and yet arriving at the home page of Silk Road was like stumbling into a parallel universe, a universe where eBay had been taken over by international drug cartels and Amazon offers a choice of books, DVDS and hallucinogens.

Drugs are just another market, and on Silk Road it was a market laid bare, differentiated by price, quality, point of origin, supposed effects and lavish user reviews. There were categories for "cannabis", "dissociatives", "ecstasy", "opioids", "prescription", "psychedelics", "stimulants" and, my favourite, "precursors". (If you've watched Breaking Bad, you'll know that's the stuff you need to make certain drugs and which Walt has to hold up trains and rob factories to find. Or, had he known about Silk Road, clicked a link on his browser.)

And, just like eBay, there were star ratings for sellers, detailed feedback, customer service assurances, an escrow system and a busy forum in which users posted helpful tips. I looked on the UK cannabis forum, which had 30,000 postings, and a vendor called JesusOfRave was recommended. He had 100% feedback, promised "stealth" packaging and boasted excellent customer reviews: "The level of customer care you go to often makes me forget that this is an illegal drug market," said one.

JesusOfRave boasted on his profile: "Working with UK distributors, importers and producers to source quality, we run a tight ship and aim to get your order out same or next day. This tight ship also refers to our attitude to your and our privacy. We have been doing this for a long time … been playing with encryption since 0BC and rebelling against the State for just as long."

And so, federal agents, though I'm sure you know this already, not least because the Guardian revealed on Friday that the National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ have successfully cracked Tor on occasion, I ordered "1g of Manali Charras [cannabis] (free UK delivery)", costing 1.16 bitcoins (the cryptocurrency then worth around £15). I used a false name with my own address, and two days later an envelope arrived at my door with an address in Bethnal Green Road, east London, on the return label and a small vacuum-packed package inside: a small lump of dope.

by Carole Cadwalladr, Guardian |  Read more:

Image: The Guardian

Pedrito Martinez Group

[ed. See also: Pushing Boundaries of Rhumba Fervor.]

Malika Favre Grass & Pool
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2 Americans, German-American Win Nobel in Medicine

[ed. Two Americans and a "German-American" won the Nobel Prize in medicine. Thanks, Yahoo!]

Two Americans and a German-American won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for illuminating how tiny bubbles inside cells shuttle key substances around like a vast and highly efficient fleet of vans, delivering the right cargo to the right place at the right time.

Sudhof, who was born in Germany but moved to the U.S. in 1983 and also has American citizenship [ed.], told the AP he received the call from the committee while driving in Spain, where he was due to give a talk.

[ed. And, in other news...]

Rothman said he lost grant money for the work recognized by the Nobel committee, but he will now reapply, hoping the prize will make a difference in receiving funding.

by Malcolm Ritter and Karl Ritter, AP |  Read more:
Image: AP Jannerik Henriksson

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A Watch That Sinks Under Its Features

In the beginning, computers were the size of buildings. To use one, you walked into it.

Over the decades, they grew small enough to sit on a desk, then to carry in a briefcase, then to keep in your pocket.

And now we’re entering the age of computers so small we wear them like jewelry.

Just what kind of jewelry, however, has yet to be decided. Will we wear our computers on our foreheads, as with Google Glass? Or will we wear them on our wrists, as with the new Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch ($300)?

Samsung isn’t the first company to put a computer on your wrist. There have been a bunch of crude early efforts: the Pebble, the Cookoo, the Metawatch, the Martian. But the world waits for an Apple or Google or Samsung to do a more coherent job of packing a lot of components into a minuscule space.

Apple’s iWatch is only a rumor. But Samsung’s Galaxy Gear watch is here now. It’s ambitious, impressive, even amazing. But it won’t be adorning the wrists of the masses any time soon.

One big reason: It’s really only half a computer. It requires the assistance of a compatible Samsung phone or tablet; without one, the watch is pretty much worthless. And right now, only two gadgets are compatible: the Galaxy Note 3 (an enormous phone with the footprint of a box of movie-theater Raisinets) or Samsung’s new 10.1-inch Galaxy tablet.

By Thanksgiving, Samsung says, it hopes to make its popular Galaxy S4 phone compatible, too; after that, the older Note 2 and S3. But the Gear watch will never work with devices from rival companies; Samsung is trying to create an Apple-like ecosystem of Samsung gadgets that work smoothly — and exclusively — together.

The watch is huge, but it’s beautifully disguised to hide its hugeness. You can buy it with a plastic wristband in different colors. You can’t exchange the bands, though, because important elements are built into it: a micro-speakerphone in the clasp and a tiny camera lens in the band.

The Gear looks and feels fine on your wrist. It’s not waterproof, but Samsung says it can withstand little splashes. You charge its battery by clamping it into a tiny USB charger — every night.

So what does the Gear do? A hodgepodge of random things. Some work well, and some not. For example:

Tell the time: On your compatible Samsung phone, you install an app called Gear Manager. It’s the front end for the watch, like iTunes for an iPod. It’s how you change the watch’s settings and customize its features — and choose a watch face for its Home screen. (The watch’s sole button, on the side, always opens this Home screen.) You have a choice of various analog and digital displays.

Take pictures and videos: These aren’t what you’d call National Geographic quality. The photos are 1.9 megapixels and the watch holds only 50 of them. Videos are tiny and short (15 seconds long); you can’t shoot more than three in a row, and the watch holds only 15 of those. But let’s not quibble — it’s a watch.

But if you thought it was creepy that Google Glass lets your conversation partner film you without your knowledge, you ain’t worn nothing yet.

by David Pogue, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Great Depression from the Perspective of Today, and Today from the Perspective of the Great Depression

The past six years have seen an interesting dual shift in economics and economic history. Six years ago economists were a highly confident, aggressive, and arrogant bunch. We believed that we understood how modern market economies worked. We believed that we knew how to keep them running with both low and stable inflation and at fairly high levels of prosperity, relative to their technological productive potential.

It happened--as it had always happened whenever economics had thought that they had it figured out--we were wrong.

We were wrong, as we have discovered over the past six years as people attempted to do economic policy, that we had misjudged how to reliably keep economies running at a high level of prosperity. And we had misjudged how to reliably keep economies running at a high level of prosperity because we had misjudged what the Great Depression was. The fact that we had a faulty vision of the Great Depression was a cause of the policy errors and macroeconomic disaster of our day, and the fact that following the policy course that we did did not cure the problems of today has led us to revise our view of the Great Depression. Thus we were doubly wrong, but now--we hope--we have it right.

Our demonstrated wrongness means that a substantial amount of what economists like me were teaching, both about the structure of the economy today and about the Great Depression, was wrong. A consequence of the past six years is that we economists need to rip up a substantial part of our lecture notes--both the modern macro lectures on proper policy during business cycles, and also our economic history lectures about the Great Depression.

Six years ago we economists saw the Great Depression as something the Federal Reserve system could, should, and ought to have stopped dead in its tracks at its beginning. But, we would have said six years ago, the Federal Reserve did not understand the situation, and so it did not act properly. But, we would have said years ago, we today know better. Thus, we would have said six years ago, if anything even remotely Great Depression-like comes down the tracks, we can stop it did. You do not need to worry that we will once again, as in The Great Depression, find ourselves in an economy that is not just depressed but profoundly depressed, and depressed not for a year or two but for more than five--and perhaps more than ten.

That was the subtext of one of the large discussions carried on at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's August 2005 Jackson Hole Conference. Raghuram Rajan--who has just been named the governor of The Bank of India, India’s central bank--argued that recent changes in financial deregulation had created a situation in which there were too many many cowboys on Wall Street doing too many things and creating too many risks. The general response--from Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan, from Arminio Fraga and Larry Summers, and from many many others, from practically everyone speaking to the group in the room save Alan Blinder--was: yes, there are cowboys, and the cowboys will lose money, but their actions will not cause any large-scale damage to the economy. Why not? Because we know well how to build firewalls between financial crises on Wall Street and the real economy of spending on currently-produced goods and services, production, and employment.

Because we know well how to build such firewalls, the near-consensus was, even if the systemically-important financial institutions have lost all control over their derivatives books and taken on immense risks they do not understand, there is no danger to the economy as a whole. Moreover, the argument was, there is value in letting the cowboys continue to do their thing. They might find some interesting business models. They will bear risk--and the world economy as a whole is short of risk-bearing capacity in normal times. Their willingness to bear risk might help accelerate technological progress: the dot-com bubble was a disaster for late-stage investors in venture capital and dot-com equities, but a boon for the rest of us as ten years' of experimentation and investment in high-tech was compressed into three.

Big mistake. Big misjudgment.

by Brad DeLong, Longform |  Read more:

Image: Wikipedia

George Booth, "Rehearsal’s Off!" and "Working on Plan B".
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Stevan Dohanos (1907 – 1994) Trailer Park Garden - Caravan Suburbia
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Capitol Hill
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Jimi Hendrix

Banksy
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Dolce and Gabbana F/W 2013 Menswear
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