Here’s a current example of the challenge we face,” he writes in the book’s prelude: “At the height of its power, the photography company Kodak employed more than 14,000 people and was worth $28 billion. They even invented the first digital camera. But today Kodak is bankrupt, and the new face of digital photography has become Instagram. When Instagram was sold to Facebook for a billion dollars in 2012, it employed only 13 people. Where did all those jobs disappear? And what happened to the wealth that all those middle-class jobs created?
Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class - Salon.com
I like Jaron Lanier a lot, but this illustration as some sort of evidence of the internet hollowing out the middle class is, forgive me for saying so, idiotic. A child could figure out where those jobs went.
1) Instagram SHOWS the photos. We have to include all of the people who work on the cloud that supports that.
2) Kodak made cameras and film. Cameras are still being made - even moreso. At the very least, we should include the current #1 camera maker’s employees. At this point, that’s apple. Fifty thousand employees. Pro rate it to only the apple devices that have cameras, ignoring their mac business. 30,000 employees.
3) The film business still exists. It was just lost to Fujichrome, who still makes film and has over 30,000 employees. This has nothing to do with the web, but rather something called “Globalization.”
The internet didn’t kill a single job in photography. There are more cameras now than ever. There are still tens of thousands of people making film.
Take the market cap of JUST these three companies - facebook, apple, fujifilm, and we’re looking at $500 billion market cap, and nearly 90,000 employees.
Think that’s unfair? Canon has nearly 200,000 employees. Nikon has 24,000. 10,000 more than Kodak. Shit, ZEISS has 24,000 employees.
Never mind every single camera in an android phone.
Those jobs went overseas, and they went to computer companies, Mr. Lanier. They still exist. The internet didn’t kill a single one of them.
(via rickwebb)
Rafer sez:
Huzzah, plus Kodak’s consumer film executives went out of their way to line their pockets on the way down, at the explicit and afaik knowing expense of the nascent digital businesses. They killed Kodak, probably knew they were doing so, and showed no signs of caring at all.
I was the first internet PM for Kodak Hollywood. My product line was one of their victims.
(via rafer)
Well played, Mr. Webb.
I’m less bullish on Jaron Lanier. After his book “You Are Not A Gadget” everything he says sounds to me like some variation of “YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!”
(via kenyatta)
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (FIXED).
Anyone trying to reach me on May 26th, nope.
If you want to know why nearly all companies suck at content marketing, these two charts should make it abundantly clear. Org charts? Committees? That is a good way to slow the process and lose in a world that moves at the speed of social media and memes. Oh, and then you have to add “legal review” to everything…
Less is more when it comes to creating and delivering great content marketing. Relevance and timeliness is everything. That is something you do not get out of meetings, committees and cross-functional groups.
Ugh. This.
Wired:
Peter Thiel, expressing his dissatisfaction with technology’s progress, recently noted, ‘We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.’ Do you agree with him?
Bill Gates:
I feel sorry for Peter Thiel. Did he really want flying cars? Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another. On the other hand, 20 years ago we had the idea that information could become available at your fingertips. We got that done. Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.
In the first few months, they were getting one customer monthly wanting to pay in Bitcoin; now it happens three to five times a week. In one case, a customer paid 4 Bitcoin for what was then $48 USD worth of cupcakes. When the price spiked to over $200, that sale turned into an $800 one. Longson says she was tempted to convert her Bitcoin over to USD then, but she and her husband decided to keep her Bitcoin bank.
“Bitcoin is in its infancy. I’m mostly showing my support for it,” says the freckled, red-haired Longson, who is six months pregnant. “I realize it’s a volatile market and I might take a loss, but it’s interesting to be involved in. It leads to really interesting conversations about how our economy is based on arbitrary people deciding how much a $1 is worth.”
And 16 hours later, box. #WoodworkingClass
Pat Kiernan reads Gabby Gifford’s entire op-ed on NY1 (by Brian Stelter)
We need to be angry and empathize with the victims without being scared. Our fears would play right into the perpetrators’ hands — and magnify the power of their victory for whichever goals whatever group behind this, still to be uncovered, has. We don’t have to be scared, and we’re not powerless. We actually have all the power here, and there’s one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.
