Long Live Literacy: Lilley's Last Lecture

Those of us who attended all four of Anthony Lilley's lectures felt a certain camaraderie as last night's seminar drew to a close. For four weeks we few, we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters) had been together as one as Lilley explained why he shouldn't be called the News International visiting professor of broadcast media but the News International visiting professor of networked media.

Okay, he didn't say that in so many words, but if the Oxford mediaocracy takes anything from his sojourn here, it should be that broadcast is dead. (I described his earlier lectures here, here and here.)

Lilley billed this as a user-generated lecture, taking inspiration from comments on his university blog, but, frankly, visitors to his blog didn't really pick up the gauntlet he had thrown down. I include myself in that, even if Lilley did reference a quote I posted on his blog. It's from a fellow named Benedict Anderson. When reading a daily newspaper, Anderson wrote, "each communicant is well aware that the ceremony he performs is being replicated simultaneously by thousands (or millions) of others of whose existence he is confident, yet of whose identity he has not the slightest notion. Furthermore, this ceremony is incessantly repeated at daily or half-daily intervals throught the calendar. ... At the same time, the newspaper reader, observing exact replicas of his own paper being consumed by his subway, barbershop or residential neighbors, is continually reassured that the imagined world is visibly rooted in every day."

I confess I get a bittersweet and melancholy feeling when I read that, for it describes a world that's on its way out, if it isn't gone already. But there's no use crying. As Lilley said, he didn't approach his subject--the future of media--from the standpoint of "how do we preserve newspapers?"

The market still offers simultaneous experiences--witness the 107 million people who watched the Super Bowl "together"--and some media experiences will go forth and multiply, living beyond the moment of their creation: The Beatles' White Album, for example, which people can enjoy without any temporal association to the Fab Four. Sticky ideas will spread virally, borne along by communities that can coalesce with ease.

Lilley touched on the proposed takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft. It's plain to him that it shows a strong desire to capture more of the lucrative online advertising market and could presage a shift of ads from TV to the Web. He cautioned that anything that threatens to restrict choice should be weighed closely.

In a previous lecture Lilley outlined what a public service broadcaster should accomplish: inform, stimulate, etc. Wasn't that also what an educational institution should do? Should we replace schools with online interactive learning centers? Lilley wouldn't go that far, but he criticized Oxford for refusing to join the 21st century. Why not put lectures online, he asked, a low-cost way of using the power of the network to energize the university's core values?

The digital revolution brings with it an explosion of choice and an erosion of control. With that, said Lilley, comes the Moral Panic, as parents turn to government to protect their children from inappropriate content and internet predators. The answer, Lilley suggested, isn't more regulation (we already have laws to protect children) but education: Parents and children need to be more media literate.

And that was his final message: Whether we like it or not, it's a big, messy, open-source world out there. We all need to learn how to navigate it.

Cynical World
There was an interesting question from a student about whether media literacy required a certain amount of cynicism. I was wondering the same thing myself: Do we tell our children not to believe anything they see on the Web? Or would that deny them the good things they can find there? Perhaps it's good for them to learn as early as possible that the world is full of all sorts of people peddling all sorts of information--and disinformation.

From BBC to BNC: Anthony Lilley Part 3

The good ol' BBC. To an American such as myself--well, let's just say to me--it's a force for good, a provider of quality television and radio programming and the repository of beneficial notions of "Britishness." But to an actual Brit it's something much more complicated. The British Broadcasting Corporation is the 800-pound gorilla in the room during any discussion of the media here.

Which is important to know when considering Anthony Lilley's third lecture last night. (I reviewed his first two lectures here and here.) It was entitled "Network Media as Public Space" and it was an impressive and largely successful attempt to explain why regulators and politicians need to comes to grips with the changes digital developments are bringing, going forward. ("Going forward" is one of those Internet-era phrases, like "long tail" and "space" [as in "social media space" or "search space.")

The forces at work conveniently all begin with the letter C:
Choice: More channels on TV. More pages on the Web.
Context: We can access information and entertainment in more and more places--a mobile phone while walking down the street, a screen in the back seat of a taxi cab.
Control: It's passing from broadcasters to us, "the people formerly known as the audience."
Conversation: We're increasingly sharing media back and forth, be it photos on Flickr or videos on YouTube.
Put this all together and you get the fifth C: Community--bunches of people interested in the same things, able to find each other more easily. We're rooted in our common likes, not only by that old limiter of affinity, geography.

Then Lilley moved to the principle of market failure, explaining that governments only invest in things that the market won't provide. That's the main argument for the BBC: The cultural, social and democratic benefits brought by the BBC wouldn't otherwise come about without the license fee. (Briefly, each household in Britain pays about 140 pounds a year. That money totals close to 4 billion pounds and it is the main budget for the BBC.)

But just as my act of sunning in the nude to provide my body with much-needed Vitamin D can frighten and disgust the neighbors, so too public investment in media can have unintended consequences. It can stifle competition. One can argue that a sober and thoughtful current affairs program broadcast at 9 p.m. on the BBC is important, but why do you need a celebrity ballroom dancing show at 8? Wouldn't the market provide that? Perhaps, goes the counterargument, but it's important to capture the viewers at 8 so that they'll stick around for 9. Besides, if everyone's paying 140 quid, shouldn't they get some value for their money beyond dutiful documentaries about global warming and dead sea turtles?

There are many definitions of what public service broadcasting should do. Lilley offered this one, among others: It should inform, stimulate interest in arts and culture, reflect and strengthen cultural identity, make us aware of different cultures. And it can do that by being of high quality (a heavily subjective area), original, innovative, challenging, engaging and widely available.

And here's where Lilley neatly pivoted and asked the audience to open their minds a bit. Interactive, networked media can do all of the things public service broadcasting demands of itself. Lilley argued that interactive media--computer games, Web sites--are by their nature educational. What's more, we are moving towards a world where there isn't an 8 p.m. dancing show followed by a 9 p.m. current affairs show. There are only shows that you download at your leisure.

In other words: Is the BBC putting its money in the wrong place? Should it be--my words, not his--the British Networking Corporation instead of the British Broadcasting Corporation?

I didn't hear Lilley commit to that notion, per se, and he was a little vague on what a BNC would look like. (More investment in radio; definite investment in educational computer games, especially those the market isn't providing; explore advances in "non-linear comedy.") But I think he's right that the landscape is changing and will change further. The dilemma that the BBC is facing--and The Washington Post, come to think of it--is that we're on one galloping horse and we need to switch to another. But, frankly, our horse has served us well, and making the leap to the other one--blowing up the notion of "broadcasting" and "mainstream"--could go horribly wrong. So we try to do both. Lilley thinks that's a recipe for disaster.

The decisions we have to make aren't easy ones, and in the case of Britain they are political decisions. "We're coming to a moment where that political judgment must be made," he said. (He also said, ruefully: "Our politicians think the media is the newspapers. They aren't thinking about it.")

How do you translate Lilley's ideas into change? I don't know, but I'm glad I'm not the one doing it. Do you risk altering--even perhaps destroying--something that has worked well, in the hopes that it will work even better in the future?

By the way, Lilley didn't use the word "meme" once last night. And he reiterated that he would assemble his last lecture from the blog postings of his readers. If you've always wanted to lecture at Oxford--albeit through the black-clad, bewhiskered person of Anthony Lilley--now's your chance. Go here and make a comment or ask a question. Or just leave a comment on my blog.

Hopping on the Lilley Pad

Last night Anthony Lilley delivered his second of four lectures on the future of media. (Click here for my take on his first lecture.) Today I'm trying to decipher my notes.

Lilley comes from the world of the mainstream media (his company has done work for Channel 4 and the Guardian) but he is not desperately holding onto old ways. He said that as we move from a broadcast model to a network model, the mainstream media will move from a position of control to one of influence.

He then illustrated the central quality of a well-connected network and how it differs from the broadcast model: The blinking television transmission tower sending its singular product to lone audience members--ie, broadcast--has been joined by the mobile phone model that allows users to talk to one another, and, more importantly, by the near-infinite network model that allows users to coalesce and come apart in an orgiastic assortment of groups. These groups can communicate to, among and with each other. (A Reed network Lilley called it, and who am I to disagree?)

Lilley quoted from my old friend Chris Anderson's book "The Long Tail" but he resisted the urge to sketch the graph central to Anderson's argument. (I had to sit on my hands so I didn't jot it in my notebook. I sometimes think that the key to Anderson's success is how easy, and how much fun, it is to draw that long tail. It's the Nike swoosh of new media bloviating.) Anderson's argument, by the way, is that niche products--books, music, film--can be more successful now that they're easy to find, thanks to the power of search.

Then Lilley was back to memes, those building blocks of culture. What makes a meme successful, Lilley said, isn't whether it's true or good or educational. It's how well it spreads. It isn't, he said in a nice turn of phrase, a matter of people accumulating ideas but of ideas accumulating people. It's a process akin to evolution, where memes compete in the environment, the successful ones spreading their cultural DNA, the unsuccessful ones being snuffed out with all the pitiless abandonment of natural selection. Competition drives memes to become more interesting and complex over time. We go from fin to paw, from paw to opposable thumb, from opposable thumb to wrist-mounted flamethrower (well, eventually).

Lilley touched on two arguments percolating in this field, between those who see great hope in "the wisdom of the crowd" and those, such as Cass Sunstein, who believe that the way the Web helps the crowd arrange itself can have a detrimental effect on society. We reinforce our beliefs rather than challenge or broaden them, says Sunstein, building "information cocoons." (Lilley called this the tragedy of the commons but that's not how I've seen that phrase used. I thought the TotC was more a conflict over finite resources, and how big groups of people--whether they be shepherds grazing their flocks or Webheads editing Wikipedia--just muck things up.)

But even something as seemingly "democratic" and free-form as Wikipedia is actually quite structured. There are about 100 overseers for Wikipedia, Lilley said. Not all Wikipedians are created equal. He moved to a discussion of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" and the people Gladwell calls connectors (socialites with lots of loose bonds), mavens (experts trusted by those around them to know what they're talking about) and salesmen (those good at persuading others). For a meme to spread you probably need to involve one or more of these types of people.

These are all interesting concepts, and useful when it comes to contemplating the future. It's mixing this all together and finding value (as a creator of memes) that is difficult, or at least difficult for me to grasp from Lilley. Take this slide he put up onscreen:

Irreversibility
Reduce entropy locally
Increase entropy globally
Fit for human purpose

"Irreversibility" means, Lilley explained, that you can't put an idea out that has to be taken back. "Reducing entropy locally" means that as a user I will understand (via a network-generated or -distributed meme, I guess) more about something. But the very act of creating that meme increases entropy globally by adding to the already over-burdened world of ideas and connections (more potential connections than there are atoms in the universe! or something). And "fit for human purpose"? Well that's obvious isn't it? In fact, you could put that one first and dispose of the rest.

The notion of value in networked media is complicated, he allowed. And the tools we'll need to bring to bear are not simplistic, linear tools. In a network, the power resides in the relationships.

I think I believe all this. I suppose I do, anyway. But I'm again left hungry for some flesh on this succinctly-sketched skeleton. It's not that I want a business school case study, it's that I need some analogies to give form to these wispy notions. Nobody else may need it. He's probably doing a good job of describing the landscape as he sees it. It's just that I'm selfish.

Or maybe, and this thought just occurred to me, maybe what he's on about isn't the creation of memes at all. Perhaps Lilley feels that a meme is a meme is a meme. What's changed is how those memes are distributed. I shouldn't be expecting Meme Creation for Dummies, but Harnessing the Networked Meme. But then again, I don't think so, for I'm pretty sure Lilley is in the school that dismisses the notion that all we're seeing is the same old stuff in a new wrapper. I think he thinks it's a whole new ballgame.

By the way, Lilley promised last night that he would say some "naughty things" about the BBC and Channel 4 at his next lecture. So get there early to pile on, all you public service broadcasting haters.

Thanks for the Meme-ories: Gilding the Lilley

And so last night to the first of four lectures by Anthony Lilley, CEO of a U.K. production company called Magic Lantern Productions. Lilley is the News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media here at Oxford. He'll be pondering the future of media and, as expected from a 21st-century digital guy, he's inviting the audience to play along. He wants all of us to contribute to his blog so he can create a user-generated lecture, one that presumably comprises the points that the audience raise.

Have the students write the lecture? Nice work if you can get it!

But seriously, it will be interesting to see the direction Lilley takes over the next three lectures. Last night was a bit of a curtain raiser, as he stuck his standard in the ground and staked his claim for a networked future where the one-to-many broadcast model will be swamped by the many-to-many. The mass media of the last 100 years, he said, will be seen to be an aberration, a deviation, as we return to a culture defined by social networking, this time made possible by the Web as opposed to the face-to-face ties that flourished in the pre-mass media age.

Lilley lamented that no mainstream media organization has at its head a visionary. As he said this he flashed a PowerPoint slide that featured a quote from Ernest Hemingway: "Never confuse movement with action." Ouch.

Then Lilley went all memetic on us. Memes, he explained, are the basic building blocks of culture, the stories societies tell themselves. The media no longer controls the creation and distribution of memes. The internet makes it possible for anyone, anywhere, anytime, to slip some memes into the cultural bloodstream. In other words: Come on down to Karl's Kulture Barn! We've gone meme crazy! Buy one meme, get one free! Better yet: Make your own memes!

(This meme business, by the way, was evidently started by Richard Dawkins, the Oxford professor best known these days for doing all he can to ensure he doesn't get into heaven.)

The problem we face isn't a scarcity of memes (we suffer, Lilley joked, from "infobesity"), it's a scarcity of attention. We're hip-deep in memes and don't have the time or attention to sort through them all. In the past, brands served as attention filters. We know what to expect from a BBC1 comedy or a Channel 4 TV show. We know how a Washington Post story differs from a National Enquirer one. But now things like "search" (trolling for memes using Google) and social networking (sharing memes with your friends on Facebook and MySpace, presumably) are eroding those distinctions. The days of the mass media's brute control of stories--of being, in Lilley's words, "the bouncer at the door"--are over.

I think he's probably right, though of course it's impossible to know right now to what degree this will Change Things. And Lilley was short on specific, real-world examples of how he sees this all playing out on the ground. A point about broadcasters always paying a lot to transmit sporting events because of sport's inherent memeeness didn't quite satisfy. And a slide he threw up that proclaimed "The Novelty of the New...The Immediacy of the Now" left me scratching my head. Why not "The Nowness of the New...The Immediacy of the Novel"?

I did take heart in his supposition that storytellers will have a place in tomorrow's interactive, networked world. He didn't say what their role will be. But Lilley has three more lectures to cover that ground.