Information goods and markets are a poor match for numerous reasons. Paradoxically, it also seems to be the direction much of the advanced world is headed, in the sense both of goods which are nothing but information (data, print, audio, images, video), and those for which information content is a large component: high-tech manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and processes.
One of the problems is fairly well understood: the tendency for marginal costs to approach zero, or at least a small fraction of the fixed costs of production (look at the story over how Boeing accounts for the R&D of its 787 Dreamliner).
Another is more insidious: information isn't readily assimilarted. If you look at the advertiser's toolkit for message dissemination, what you see are all kinds of ways to drape the intended message over an assimilable one: sex, youth, beauty, fame, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, loss. Or repetition, music, disorientation, flashy elements.
Junk food (of the dietary or infotainment variety) has cognizability, a word I first ran across in William Stanley Jevons description of characteristics of money. You instantly recognise what these are. Complex truths are, well, more complicated. The geniuses who discover or explain them come up with useful metaphors or analogies: Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Feynman. Much of that is mapping a novel thought onto a familiar one.
We're not going to take that out of information, it's part and parcel of the bargain (a metaphor, incidentally, arguably a cliche). But we can try engineering systems for compensating and promoting information which don't flagrantly flog and feed junk. That's the feedback and control loops Williams talks of.
One approach is to treat information as a public good. It's what the UK does with the BBC, and it's the philosophy of a number of institutions, including CUNY's Graduate Center (who've adopted this as their motto), and Robert McChesney and John Nichols:
We can also look at the daily habits of the ordinary people who create non-junk content every day.
De Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life is all about this: the fertile creativity of people going about their lives, which is overpowered by the glitz of mass media and the seriousness of corporate activity.
That's where my love is, and it's the base for my anti-commercial sentiment. Power to the people.
Corporations didn't invent food, literature, math, love, cleverness, music, fishing, gardening, dancing... they are sponsors at best, tyrants at worst.
So when they try to convince me that, say, music is doomed because of "pirate copying," it really makes me laugh. I have a guitar right here, and two friends who are into folk song...
And all this goddamn stuff they think it's important to consume, including all the goddamn news. To hell with it.
In advertising there is a concept called effective frequency which is, essentially, how many times someone needs to be exposed to your ad before they make a purchase. This is tied pretty directly to the complexity of your message. The more complex your message, the higher the effective frequency and the more times people need to be exposed to your ad before they buy your product. Hence the tendency towards easily assimilated ideas like you mention.
I'm starting to think I need to look at advertising theory some more. Ugh.
Thanks for the comment though, pretty much as I'd suspected.
Another note: if the frequency is too high in any one period of time, I suspect there's burnout. Political advertising seems to hit this point -- a friend in a heavily campaigned state a few years back used to respond to candidate spots with "F--- you <name>" when yet another of the multiple-times-an-hour ads would sound.
You need repetitions, but also spacing.
There's also ... I forget the name, but "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy", a 1930s / 1940s Texas politician. Ended up governor, before getting caught up in a corruption scandal. Early name recognition came from his fame as a bluegrass / popular music performer.
You are bordering on some basic advertising theory! Seeing an ad too often has a negative effect. So depending on your industry, you advertise with different strategies. My favorite example is beer. They advertise year round, but pretty low key. You'll see maybe one or two beer ads a week. But when certain events occur (superbowl, spring break, holidays, etc) they ramp up advertising and you'll see two to three a day.
Its different for each industry though, some do 90% of spend for the holidays.
Even before you get to burnout you get saturation where more advertising yields lower returns. There is a whole industry around advertising analytics and helping advertisers figure out how to allocate their budgets for maximum penetration without wasting money on saturated audiences.
If you're interested in some advertising theory, give Media Planning: A Practical Guide by Jim Surmanek[0] a shot. It's short and pretty accessible.
One of the problems is fairly well understood: the tendency for marginal costs to approach zero, or at least a small fraction of the fixed costs of production (look at the story over how Boeing accounts for the R&D of its 787 Dreamliner).
Another is more insidious: information isn't readily assimilarted. If you look at the advertiser's toolkit for message dissemination, what you see are all kinds of ways to drape the intended message over an assimilable one: sex, youth, beauty, fame, fear, greed, jealousy, envy, loss. Or repetition, music, disorientation, flashy elements.
Junk food (of the dietary or infotainment variety) has cognizability, a word I first ran across in William Stanley Jevons description of characteristics of money. You instantly recognise what these are. Complex truths are, well, more complicated. The geniuses who discover or explain them come up with useful metaphors or analogies: Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Feynman. Much of that is mapping a novel thought onto a familiar one.
We're not going to take that out of information, it's part and parcel of the bargain (a metaphor, incidentally, arguably a cliche). But we can try engineering systems for compensating and promoting information which don't flagrantly flog and feed junk. That's the feedback and control loops Williams talks of.
One approach is to treat information as a public good. It's what the UK does with the BBC, and it's the philosophy of a number of institutions, including CUNY's Graduate Center (who've adopted this as their motto), and Robert McChesney and John Nichols:
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-save-journalism-0/