Robert Paterson's Weblog

Only 8 months to go til we get back to this

Cable & TV are doomed - So now what?

Will newspapers all die? Maybe not. I am sure that, in some form, some Newspapers will live on. But for most of us – the Newspaper as a “Paper” for the masses is already dead. Will Paper Books die? Maybe not – I treasure my new Picture Book of my son’s wedding. There are few text filled books I will always treasure. But as a mass market object, books are already dead for many people as the sales of eBooks and Readers show.

The mass market distribution systems that supported newspapers and books will die soon as a result. For traditional papers and books only have to shrink by 15 – 25% to make the economic burden of running the presses and the system too much. Once these systems have gone they will be gone for ever. New systems are emerging.

I can already design and set my new book and have it printed and sent back to me – a market of one!

This is a new system quite separate from the old book distribution and publishing system. New “newspapers” such as Politico and Huffington are here. Some old ones such as the Guardian are moving to the new space. Twitter and Facebook fill in more news for me. My new “news paper” will be edited largely by me for me!

The same process is now going to affect TV. Most of the old infrastructure will die. New structure will emerge quickly. Some old structure will hybridize. The power will shift from them to me!

I have just enjoyed an Apple TV for a week with Netflix.  Now watching content via the web is easy. But the big attraction is not just that getting content online is easy. What I had not known about was how powerful the impact would be of how my habits of watching affects how Netflix adjusts its offering to me. In only a week, it has used its algorithm to begin to offer me content that I might never have noticed that I will almost certainly enjoy. What it is doing is “meaning making” of the almost infinite pool of content that is out there. This has put me in charge – I am now my own programmer. I am my own network CEO. I choose the time and I choose the content knowing that I will enjoy it. I also lose all the rubbish and all the ads.

I am constructing my own TV Network! This is the revolution that extends way beyond the web access issues. The web enables this personal customization for TV as wit will for books and news.

I am happy to pay a subscription for this. I don’t demand that this be free because it is great value for me. I will never go back to appointment TV – no matter who puts it on – a network, a cable company or public TV.

My bet is that within a year, the death of Appointment TV will be sure and a new system will be visible. Look at how TechCrunch see this right now!

• Google unveiled its Google TV platform less than 3 weeks ago. You can’t ignore Google. Hey, they just built a car that drives itself. But Thursday, in a battle that will likely become more frequent between old media and new, ABC, CBS and NBC blocked their programs fromGoogle TV. MTV, Fox and HBO are still available, but that could change. Still, one TechCrunch post declared “I’ve seen the future and it begins on my sofa with Google TV.”
• Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has already sold 250,000 new Apple TVs. The first Apple TV shipped in 2007. It had its fans but didn’t take off like the iPod or iPhone. The second generation of Apple TV’s launched just last month. MG Siegler really likes the device, but admitted it’s not yet the killer device in the living room. To get there, he said, would require tv network subscription packages.
• “Watch Instantly” is booming at Netflix. A shocking statistic came out this week. 20% of Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S. is coming from Netflix.
  For more on Netflix’s plans, see Sarah Lacy’s interview with CEO Reed Hastings.
• Hulu Plus will be coming to the Roku box in the fall.
  For some, the Roku box may be the first step towards eliminating cable.
• Boxee announced the new Boxee Box will ship next month, both if you pre-ordered fromAmazon or want to buy one in stores.
• Flurry reported Apple’s iOS Apps are responsible for the recent downward trend in TV ratings. The actual cause may be a bit broader.
• A TechCrunch post Friday suggested the future of TV is HTML5.

At the moment much power remains with the old powers. Netflix and Google are enduring tough negotiations with the producers of content. But why wouldn’t they take up this mantle of being the producer? Why can’t they do an HBO? Certainly today if I was a maker of documentary who cannot get space on conventional TV, I would approach Netflix and Google. Just as cable supplanted the networks, so those who provide access via the web will supplant cable and networks.

So what then for Public TV and the local Public TV stations?

If you are a producer it seems straightforward to me – you too have to approach those who shape access to the web – or add a service to the web yourself!

But that leaves the local TV stations on the beach! It does but like a local book shop, the audience is going somewhere else for the mass content.

So what to do?

Here is Doc Searls’ advice in a recent interview with me at KETC:

I think that an answer is to build the “Local Cloud” – Host the new Forum or Agora or Market. Be the host of the new/old marketplace for sharing through video.

There is not yet a really well functioning local cloud yet for video. This is a huge hole, waiting to be filled. Look at all those who are learning to use video. They are driving to HQ video. Look at the new screens that offer up a much better experience.

Take a look at your new 1080p HD TV screen. You know what the best-looking source is for that? Your new 1080p camcorder. That’s because all the TV stations, and all the cable and satellite services, compress their video, often to the point where grass fields look plaid and detail is just wiggly lines. Camcorders compress video too, but not as much.

My point here is that more and more individuals and small groups are going to be in better and better positions to produce their own video, and won’t be satisfied seeing it compressed to ugliness on YouTube. They’ll want to produce their own movies, their own documentaries, their own creative work, outside the  industrial system that YouTube comprises.

If they want to mash this video up, edit it, do CGI, do the kind of rendering that serious video requires, they won’t have the means at home. And it’s often too hard to do it out in some remote cloud provided by the likes of Amazon (which doesn’t even provide that yet — at least not exactly). They’ll need low-latency fat connections to back-end servers and rendering farms.

Thus we have a big opportunity for KETC and other public TV institutions, to ally with local telco and cable companies, which in most cases have the space, the conditioned power, and the direct connections to the Net’s backbone.

How much time before the Tipping Point? My feeling is 2-3 years tops. In 2-3 years time all your best audience will have made the shift to the web. This may be 30- 40% of the total. There will still be a conventional audience but it cannot pay the bills. Just as when a newspaper or a book publisher loses its best readers, it cannot pay its bills either.

The pace is change is accelerating as each new phase builds on the previous one and adds new platform power to the web. Coming right on the heels of all of this – a new web based system of education and then right after that a new web based health system. All based on the same idea – of putting you in the driver’s seat!

via fastforwardblog.com

Ok enough Healthy Food - Which is your path to hell?

I love fat and meat so my food path to hell looks like this

But I know that some of you like sweet things - so how about this?

Here is the site to go to to choose your end - This is why you are fat

Where are the men?

Gender breakdown from 1968/69 to 2000/10

via theglobeandmail.com

This info graphic is in today's Globe and Nail that is looking at the issue of failing men. Macleans ran a lead on this topic too. At UPEI at least 70% of the graduates are women.

No one yet has a simple answer for why - but at least now the question is on the table.

What may be the the consequences of this?

This is "Public TV"!

Alvin’s Story

Lauren Schwarze | October 20, 2010 | Comments (0)

---

Over the past three months we’ve had the pleasure of working with young refugees from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Nepal, Iraq, Bosnia, and Somalia. They took a nineAcademy class, learning how to use Flip cameras and edit video using Final Cut Express. After learning the skills necessary to create a video, they each told their story on-camera and made a video of their life story.

In this video, Alvin talks about his life during the Blood Diamond War in Sierra Leone. He tells a very powerful story, and his gratitude with respect to coming to America is evident.

Take a look at Alvin’s story–what do you think?

via explorehomeland.org

Giving Alvin the chance to tell his story.

Jon Stewart - NPR says no KETC says Yes!

Homeland team members have spent a lot of time in the St. Louis community asking people about immigration—people in Forest Park, people in the skate park, people at work, people out of work, immigrants themselves, and immigration experts. Most have enlightened us, many have corrected us, some have yelled at us, while others have praised the work we’re doing.

But no matter how many people we talk to or how much the Homeland initiative has changed since the beginning, we still believe that our work is not simply about immigration, but about creating dialogue around an important issue in a way that is difficult to find in media today. And even some of the people who have yelled at us will agree—the media is often polarizing and divisive on the issue of immigration.

A recent online poll by TIME magazine found Jon Stewart to be America’s “most trusted newscaster” in the wake of Walter Cronkite’s death. What is especially interesting is that Stewart was able to pull at least second place in every state except for one…Vermont. Some critics believe this is because Stewart was the lone comic relief, as the other choices were all network news anchors.

I have my own theory based on what my Homeland colleagues and I have been hearing. Many members of the community are sick and tired of clashing sound bites, constant vitriol, and the acknowledgment of only two sides. Shows like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show exist because there was a need for a source that could counteract the way news is being covered today.

Although we’re using community engagement rather than humor, ultimately we, like The Daily Show, are hoping to accomplish a thoughtful dialogue around important issues in our community, like immigration.

So, naturally, when we heard that there was a bus-full of St. Louisans attending Colbert and Stewart’s ‘ ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear’, An opportunity to travel 847 miles each way and spend a total of 30 hours in close quarters with 52 other people, when no one has had an opportunity to sleep or shower? Yes, but…

For us this is an opportunity to document and explore why everyone else on the bus is willing to take on this grueling trip. To me it seems that they feel it’s important to stand behind the men who not only make them laugh, but stand up for the people’s right to be informed and engaged. Using immigration as our key issue, we will be there for every step of the journey and I expect, as usual, there will be enlightenment, excitement…and of course yelling (from me, mostly because I truly love my sleep).

The plan for now is for Kate Shaw, our online producer, and me to make the journey while sending back video, Facebook, Twitter, and blog content along the way in real time. But we’re wondering exactly how you think we should cover the bus ride and the actual event. What do you want to hear about? Do you think we’re a little bit crazy for going? I know I do…but we want to hear from you!

Share|

via explorehomeland.org

We have been debating going to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally - some media organizations have banned their staff.

Here is how we are talking about this.

 

Putting the Public into Public TV

 

Most of us have video camera's now. Few of us can tell a good story on Video. If we are to have a great source of community, we have to help people get really good at video story telling. Hence The Nine Academy. 

Diet - Evolution and You - Your Health

One of my favourite foods as a boy and a young adult was to have cereal and cream as desert at dinner.

But starting about 15 years ago - whenever I had this I felt terrible.

Why was this? A meal that I had had all my life was now a problem? I can't eat cream any more. It's not just cream - I don't drink milk. But now wheat!

Why do I now feel awful when I have more than a small amount of pizza? I love white bread but I can't eat it and feel well anymore.

And Sugar! Half a chocolate bar and I feel as if I am going to die! As a boy I lived for candy.

What has happened to me? Why is dairy, wheat and sugar causing me so much distress?

The answer is in my evolutionary history.

I have a Scots and Scandinavian heritage. I am part of a quite small group of people who are "evolved" to be able to tolerate lactose.

(Source) The answer is in how I and you adapted to the new foods of agriculture and what this evolutionary story tells us about whom we are and how we react to food.

If I was a native MikMaq who have been living in Atlantic Canada for more than 10,000 years - I would never have been comfortable eating any dairy. For the first time a Mikmaq had dairy might have been from a French settler 250 years ago. 

Dairy and Wheat are NEW FOODS for most people. This map shows how and when milk came to Europe. Most other people from anywhere else has little or now tolerance for lactose. Milk is a "New Food" that only certain Europeans can eat and feel ok. Most other people cannot. Here is an interesting article that says more about this.

An unusual circumstance has made this research possible in the first place. Homo sapiens was originally unable to digest raw milk. Generally, the human body only produces an enzyme that can break down lactose in the small intestine during the first few years of life. Indeed, most adults in Asia and Africa react to cow's milk with nausea, flatulence and diarrhea.

But the situation is different in Europe, where many people carry a minute modification of chromosome 2 that enables them to digest lactose throughout their life without experiencing intestinal problems. The percentage of people with this modification is the highest among Britons and Scandinavians (see graphic).

This Milk adapted people migrated into Europe about 7,000 years ago and pushed out the locals who could not compete.

Dairy is not a food that is naturally good for all people and only a few of us can tolerate it and then, as in my case only for a period of time - more on this later in the post.

The same is true for wheat. It is also a NEW FOOD. New in these terms. That for millions of years we ate only meat, berries, insects, roots and nuts. We did not eat milk or ANY grain. Humans have only eaten wheat for a few thousand years. 

There is evidence that we lose our evolved adaptation to wheat also as we grow older:

A recent study at the University of Maryland reveals that the prevalence of people suffering from gluten-intolerance and celiac disease has significantly increased over the past 30 years.

Researchers found that more people are losing their tolerance to gluten, the gluey protein found in wheat, barley and rye, as they grow older.

Since 1974, in the U.S., the incidence of the disorder has doubled every 15 years. Using blood samples from more than 3,500 adults, the researchers found that the number of people with blood markers for celiac disease increased steadily from one in 501 in 1974 to one in 219 in 1989. In 2003, a widely cited study conducted by the Center for Celiac Research placed the number of people with celiac disease in the U.S. at one in 133.

As the people in the study aged, the incidence of celiac disease rose, echoing the findings of a 2008 Finnish study in Digestive and Liver Disease that found the prevalence of celiac disease in the elderly to be nearly two and a half times higher than the general population. The recent findings challenge the common speculation that the loss of gluten tolerance resulting in the disease usually develops in childhood. (University of Maryland School of Medicine)

We have been eating sugar for a few hundred years. Most kids can't get enough of it. But again, for many as we age, sugar can poison us.

We have been eating corn for no more than 50 years and it now is the base of our entire food system. There is hardly anything that is not part of the corn base - most of our meat is corn fed - cows and chickens never had corn before 1950 either. Corn based sweeteners are in all processed food.

Here is the punch line. 

The industrial age has made foods for which we are not adapted the core of what we eat. No wonder we are facing a health crisis.

Peoples such as Native Canadians who are only 2 generations from a Hunter Gatherer diet are especially vulnerable.

Paiute Indians in 1850 - look at their bodies. That is not where most First nation people are today. The issue is that they have not evolved to cope with the industrial diet. But they now rely on it.

There is a a range of ancestry that has evolved to cope with dairy and wheat and grains. But none of us are adapted well to corn and to sugar. 

The Industrial diet has spread around the world and many places such as India and China now face a diabetes and obesity epidemic that has just begun.

More than 160 million Chinese have high blood pressure and 20 million suffer from diabetes, the ministry said. Those rates and other obesity-related ills are rising. China Daily

The new study released this week found the proportion of overweight adults in China has jumped by one-third, to 23 percent, since 1992. It said the number of people considered clinically obese had nearly doubled to 60 million, or 7.1 percent of adults, though it didn't say how that category was defined.

In most parts of the world there is little evolutionary adaptation to dairy and wheat and none for corn and sugar.

But even for someone like me from Scotland and the Orkney - who is well adapted to dairy and wheat, I lose this adaptation as I age.  I also have no way of coping with corn.

So this then is the evolutionary context for the health epidemic that confronts the world today.

We are adapted to a Hunter Gatherer diet. Millions of years of eating meat, grass fed by the way, berries, tree nuts, insects, fish, roots. has adapted us well to these foods. Only a few of us can tolerate dairy and wheat and then in middle age we seem to lose this and fall back onto our heritage.

None of us are adapted to corn and to sugar - both grasses.

Even our farming ancestors paid a high price for the shift to grains. They lost about 6 inches in mean height!

The bottom line is that our agricultural diet is not that great for us and is bad for many. Our Industrial diet is even worse.

The risk is NOT FAT! on it's own. It is our inability to adapt to grains.

The Canada Food Guide as shown here is a marketing ploy - much of what is in it is bad for us. The emphasis on grains and dairy in particular.

What is becoming clear is that many of us are not adapted ever to this diet. AND that as we get older all of us lose this adaptation and need to return to our more Natural Diet - our Paleo diet.

If you wish to enter middle age and your senior years in good health, one of the core steps is to get the industrial diet off your table and to get as much of the agricultural diet out too. Not easy but a lot at stake.

All the more reason to get the industrial diet off the table for our kids.

And the good news - booze is Neolithic! Beer came before bread!

So in closing what is your ancestry? How do you feel when you eat certain foods? What is your tolerance?

Will education follow the same path as media? I think so!

 

After many years of thinking and talking, here Sir Ken I think nails the problem and gets the direction for the right new path correct. Helped a lot by the guys at RSA.

So what can we do with this insight?

My experience in public radio and TV - which also is at a crossroads from one culture to another - is that we must not under estimate the power of the entrenched culture. Most people inside pub radio/TV and in education are so invested in the old that they can only fight an alternative.  This is not because they are bad or stupid - it is because they are human and their identity is the system as it is. So to change it means that they have no place. So they cannot go to the new. 

If you long for a better education system - you are also worried about how to breakthrough all these barriers. You don't know how to change the system. I think that we can look at what is happening in media and find a way. 

So where is the change happening in media that we might use to help us in education. As I write them I can see how these factors apply to education - can't you?

• The long term effects of the poor economy is pressing the system
  • The school system is under huge funding pressure too
  • In higher ed - the degree also costs too much now and drives loans that canot be repaid
  • Kids will seek out new ways - they have to
  • In the next 10 years the pressure to find a new way for the money will become unbearable - thus creating the same kind of context for change that we see in media

• There are organizations like Craigslist that are killing the economics of the old and forcing economic pressure - the old way leads to economic starvation and sets a context for change
  • There are new online schools such as the Khan Academy that offer kids a wonderful alternative to school
  • Great Schools like MIT have put a lot of superlative content online
  • Kids are voting with their feet - better content will be available online for next to free as with Craigslist and personals that will ad to the economic pressure

• The web has a bunch of new tools such as Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, iTunes, Apple TV etc that are empowering new sources and new ways of finding, producing and using content
  • Same for Ed - iTunes, YouTube are already there
  • Why take Math with Miss Jones when you can get the world's best math teachers on your time at your pace?
  • Parents will buy into this too

• There are entirely new organizations - Huffington Post, Daily Beast, Politico - Greenfield that go through no transition but start with the new model - they are forcing competitive pressure
• There are a few old leaders who get it and have enough critical mass inside to go for it now - The Guardian in the UK and NPR - they are forcing change on their system
  • Athabaska and Phoenix come to mind in higher ed - they are moving to the mainstream
  • Soon there will be Grade Schools that have the same features

• There are  few local small organizations that have the leadership to go for it too and are making enough progress to show the rest - KETC is the one I know the best.

So what to do?

Don't think about changing the whole system!!!!! It's too big and powerful.

Instead take advantage of these powerful forces.

If you are a learner - Explore the new world of resources - do not feel trapped in school as it is or feel that you have to wait - enough change is here for you to take full advantage now

If you are a parent - see the whole picture for you child - help line them up into that is now available that is more fitted to them and at a cost you can all afford. Vote with your feet.

If you are a school board - Learn how to make the shift from the old to the new - Do a KETC - pick a school with the right leadership and try the new in ONE place - learn from this - use this test bed to expose others to the new from their peers.

If you are a teacher - Learn how to be the new - participate in the new world - be a citizen teacher - offer content or coaching - learn how to be an entrepreneurial teacher who can hang up their shingle on the web or locally. Be the math coach or the history coach in your place or globally!

If you are a social entrepreneur - Build the new a place together so that you are the convener of the a place where kids can be together and yet be part of the a larger universe of resources that fits them! 

It's coming folks - you can win now if you play now.

Benoit Mandelbrot, RIP

Nothing in the news media yet, but many folks on Twitter and colleague Nassim Taleb are reporting that the father of fractal geometry is dead at age 85. We're not there yet, but someday Mandelbrot's name will be mentioned in the same breath as Einstein's as a genius who fundamentally shifted our perception of how the world works.

His death is now confirmed NYT His His death, at a hospice, was caused by pancreatic cancer, his wife, Aliette, said. He had lived in Cambridge.

via kottke.org

A giant - the discoverer of the geometry of complexity and chaos - or how the world really works. A life well lived!

Posted via email from Rob's posterous

More here - you get a sense of his mind and how sweet he was as a man