Paul's Perspective

User-video Impacts U.S. election

It certainly sounds like hyperbole to say that YouTube decided the November 7 election and caused the control of Congress to change -- but that might not be all that much of an exaggeration...

While the U.S is almost always portrayed as harshly polarized into 'red' and 'blue' states, the truth is that the country is 'purple:' elections [especially the last two presidential ones] are close calls in most states: the coasts and the South are not Democratic strongholds, nor is everyone in the Midwest or the 'heartland' a staunch Republican.

This near 50/50 mix means that media is more important than ever in swaying middle-ground and undecided voters to cast a ballot one way or the other.

But while TV has long been a major [and expensive] factor in political campaigns, now the power of video is in the hands of just about everyone -- affordably.

This last election was particularly close: but while the long-out-of-power Democrats won a decisive majority in the House of Representatives, the race to control the Senate was too close to call for days after the polls closed.

Finally it came down to the undecided Senate race in Virginia, and the office held by U.S. Sen. George Allen... the man most famous of late for calling a campaign worker for his opponent a "Macaca" -- while that man was video-taping him.
How many people watched the video on YouTube? Nearly 400,000, reports the Boston Herald.
Of course those weren't all Virginians -- but the Senator lost his office to Democrat Jim Webb by about 7,000 votes, out more than 2.3 million ballots. [Webb is a former Republican and Navy secretary under President Reagan, showing again how closely the country is divided...]

The Republicans made use of YouTube as well, of course: the Herald reports that more than 1 million viewers downloaded well-produced clips of Sen. John Kerry's infamous botched "joke."

Another example of the growth of User video is the group-blog company Pajamas Media, which outfitted its contributors covering the election with 8MP Canon PowerShot A630s [$256 on Amazon], using the still camera's video capabilities to capture dozens of clips that were then streamed via YouTube.

We've long promoted the importance of non-professional video captured with ubiquitous camcorders, cameras, and phones -- and now that the capture is coupled with Web-based distribution and access, it is really a paradigm change [pardon the now-trite phrase].
Most recently at our 6Sight conference we hosted the session on "The Global Video Revolution."
The saying "the revolution will be televised" has become a cliché; but in this case web-based video was a prime factor in a "revolution" wherein leadership over the House and Senate shifted from the party in power for 12 years to it opponents.

That such dramatic change is done peacefully is the strength of democracy -- and now video is an even stronger influence on how the voters in that democracy exercise their franchise.
--From my Future Image Weekly Briefing

Democratization of Video: Pre-Revolution

This is a post I first wrote for our company blog at livefrom6sight.com:

The most powerful communication technology -- video -- has not been accessible to most people.

Most people could not easily or affordably capture or express something on video and then share it with a wide audience -- even with affordable camcorders and PC-based digital video editing.

But now, thanks to web-based sharing sites as exemplified by YouTube, that is changing:
Anyone can post a short clip, and thousands if not millions of people may watch it.

In 1999, I was over-enthusiastic about the possibilities of digital video for both production and distribution:
With my friends and family, I started to create my own 12-hour TV serial.

But dreams of being a mini-mogul faded after many months of trying to coordinate everyone’s volunteer time into a production schedule. It was like herding cats.

Also, many of my projections were wildly optimistic: developments I thought were a few years away have yet to arrive.

Nonetheless, it was the most fun I’ve ever had -- and I think most of what I foresaw in 1999 will still come to pass eventually.

After the jump: my still-very-lengthy business summary from the previous millennium, with some names changed to protect the guilty.
[Such as the show’s name is changed to just “the show.”]

24 finale and cliff hangers

Another nihilistic ending.

24 is a silly, over-adrenalized adventure -- I loved it for precisely that reason. It was a fun roller coaster of a TV show.

But if you know a roller coaster ride will end in a crash, will you get on?

Like millions of others, I was caught up in Jack Bauer’s quest to stop the nerve gas attacks and expose the conspiracies behind them. Hell, like many, I wanted him to personally imprison if not cold-bloodedly execute the whimpering excuse for a president, Logan.

Instead we see that after hours and hours of pain and struggle, after saving hundreds if not thousands, yes, Jack’ s plan to expose Logan works - -but he doesn’t get to see it happen.

Instead, as reward for his efforts, he is drugged, beaten, and kidnapped by the Chinese -- still angry over the consulate killed in a mission Jack led [although who actually pulled the trigger is a mystery lingering from last season].

I don’t like it. I want to see my heroes struggles, yes, otherwise there is no drama -- but I don’t want to see them endlessly tortured.

From an entertainment/art side, I think this cliffhanger ending is needless and wrong. A season should tell a story, and a hero who struggles should be rewarded with at least a few days peace and happiness before going off to war again. Otherwise it is not entertainment, it is tedium.

From a business angle, this cliff hanger in no way makes me, or those like me, more likely to watch again next season. After all. It is not as if I really worry about the safety of this fictional character and need to tune in next time to see if he will escape….

I would watch next season if, when it starts, I feel like watching that much more TV, if I have the time -- and if I want to take this ride again. I can’t predict the first two factors, but I can guess at the third one now:

Nine months from today the adrenaline will be long gone, the roller coaster will have stopped. And before boarding again, I will try to recall enough about the ride to decide if I want to get on once more.
And if my prime recollection is "Oh yeah: this is the series that tortures its hero nonstop, that never lets up, that does not in any way reward the characters or the viewers" -- then I more than likely won’t set the DVR for 24 next year.

[Now that I think about it, this is why I did not watch the 2nd or 3rd seasons: after really getting into the first season, after caring about a man’s struggle to save his wife and daughter, I just hated the ending that had that wife killed in cold blood, out of the blue, as its last moment. That hateful nihilism lost me then and there. I never watched the show again because of that; until I tuned in last season because I was bored.... Next year I’ll take up a hobby instead of bathing in negativity again.]

"Invasion" finale

One line from another’s review exemplifies the problem I continually had with this show:
"It quickly becomes clear that there's only one way to keep Larkin alive.
Tom brings her to the shore... and sends her off into the water!"

That would NOT keep her alive.
He was [delusionally, perhaps] KILLING HER.
Just as he KILLED his wife when he led her to the water in the first or second episode.
Remember, they found the real Mariel’s body mid-season. The thing walking around looking and talking like her is NOT her.

All the characters seem to be in denial about this FACT of their situation.
The "hybrids" are not a changed person: they are a new life form that uses human genetic material to make a duplicate.

This is exemplified when the kid says, paraphrased, "She is different, but she is still my mommy."
No kid, she is not -- she is the thing that KILLED your mother -- that drowned her in the water, gobbled up her DNA, and then tried to take her place in a new body.

I think the show took a major wrong turn early on when it did clearly show the real Mariel’s body, and tried to get us to empathize with the "new Mariel." At first, she was a nice-acting ‘woman’ who was confused at the ‘changes’ in her body… but it then became clear that she was in fact the thing that killed the character with whom we were supposed to be identifying.

Clearly, the way the hybrids worked was thought out before the show was in production [at least I hope it was] ---
-- but during the first few episodes I was under the impression that post-hurricane, we were seeing actual humans *who were changing* in ways they did not understand -- and that Sheriff Tom was just the guy who understood and liked what had changed in him.
I thought the "invasion" was of each character’s body -- and THAT could have been some cool drama, as real people we could empathize with went through changes they could not control -- slowly, over the course of a season… all the while finding out more about Tom and how happy he was at his own change.

Instead, it was simply "body snatchers in the swamp" -- and no one changed: they were simply killed and replaced.

[And that is why I could not sympathize with Sheriff Tom: he knowingly killed his wife; then he knowingly killed his deputy. The fact that his victims were replaced with identical ‘hybrid’ clones does not alleviate his crimes.]

I would still like to see a show that dealt with what I thought this one had set up: new life forms that are changing our characters -- not killing and replacing them.

Maybe *I* will write that one...