The Long Tail

Finished Chris Anderson's The Long Tail this morning, and while I've been following the discussion around these issues (and chiming in occasionally) since his original essay was published, I still found the book completely stimulating and fun to read. In addition to the original research that drives so much of his argument, Chris has also included some fascinating stories: the creation of the Sears-Roebuck catalogue; the pro-am movement in astronomy, etc. It also has a very persuasive critique of one of my pet peeves -- the polarization hypothesis generally associated with Cass Sunstein. (Related to our epic serendipity debate from earlier this year.)

There was a review in the Wall Street Journal this weekend that chided Chris for sharing some of the techno-utopian tendencies of writers like Steven Johnson and James Surowiecki, which is damning criticism indeed. And it's true The Long Tail -- like a certain book of mine -- does generally hold to an enthusiastic tone about the trend it is describing. But in Chris's case at least, I find that kind of sweeping criticism irritating. I suspect Chris does believe the that the trend towards long tail distributions in culture is, on the whole, a substantial improvement over the top heavy mass media model that has dominated the twentieth century. But that hardly makes him a techno-utopian. It means that in this one realm of technological development, Chris thinks things are getting better. For all we know, there may be other technological trends that Chris considers more problematic or troubling -- the point is, The Long Tail is not a book about those trends, nor is it a general statement about technology (the way, I imagine, Kevin Kelly's next book will be.)

When I was heavy in the promotion of Everything Bad, I often had people generalize out from my endorsement of popular culture and say things like: "Well, you think everything's just cheery in American society right now..." And I'd invariably have to explain that this wasn't true: I think there are plenty of problems in America right now (the usual suspects: wealth inequality, global warming, our President); I just happen to think pop culture is not one of those problems. So I wrote the book partially to say to our politicians and other cultural authorities: stop worrying about video games -- you've got real problems to deal with. Maybe you should focus on them for a change.

Reading The Long Tail actually made me think that I should have added one additional factor in my description of the forces behind The Sleeper Curve, the trend towards increased pop culture complexity I described in Everything Bad. One of the puzzling things about the Curve that readers occasionally had trouble with is that the trend is towards increased complexity, but not necessarily elevated artistic or intellectual achievement. The content can be silly or gratuitously violent, but the formal techniques used to convey the content have grown, on average, more complex. There's more information conveyed in shorter amounts of time, with less hand-holding from the creators. It occurred to me reading The Long Tail that the general trend from mass to niche can explain some of this increased complexity: niches can speak to each other in shorthand; they don't have to spell everything out. But at the same time, the niche itself doesn't have to become any more aesthetically or intellectually rich compared to what came before. If there's a pro wrestling niche, the creators don't have to condescend to the non-wrestling fans who might be tuning in, which means that they can make more references and in general convey more information about wrestling -- precisely because they know their audience is made up of hard core fans. But it's still pro wrestling. The content isn't anything to write home about, but the form grows more complex. In a mass society, it's harder to pull that off. But out on the tail, it comes naturally.

Comments

[Sally Carson]

Without having seen the WSJ article, I still feel compelled to comment on it. I think the enthusiasm that you convey in your writing is one of the things that engages me and makes me feel even more enthusiastic about the subject matter myself. Hehe, maybe my mirror-nuerons are firing when I read enthusiasm!

[_oh]

One comment I heard lately about the world wide web and it's early development seems appropriate on this subject. The Next computers, from steve jobs company in the 1980s/90s were wonderful computers. They were the machines that Tim Berners Lee used to start off his web project. The web was this idea to combine hypertext and networks to create a new medium.

Apparently though, the Next computer company didn't have the best of marketing. Someone said, that Next machines were first rate machines with second rate marketing. The machines we use today, are second rate machines with first rate marketing.

Why do people always have trouble with this? That poor inventions, poor products and bad ideas, with the right kind of 'marketing' can always succeed. Even where superior products have failed? It goes for almost everything, for supersonic air travel, architectural design, computers, food,.... you name it.

Brian O' Hanlon.

[Carl Carpenter]

Feedback appears to be essential to intelligence. In his recent book, Jeff Hawkins redefines intelligence as the ability to accurately predict the future based on memories of the past. In the human neocortex, he points out, feedback projections outnumber feedforward projections nearly 10 to 1. So wherever we see feedback introduced in a system we're likely to see fresh intelligence emerging. Tim O'Reilly is now identifying collective intelligence as the essence of Web 2.0, which is of course all about feedback. Regardless of manifestation, whether Long Tail, Sleeper Curve, or Web 2.0, there seems to be a common neural model beneath.

Perhaps the increased complexity you write about represents greater intelligence in the Hawkinsian sense, that is, the ability to better predict, while not necessarily producing 'elevated artistic or intellectual achievement.' This might also explain the puzzlement of your readers. Their intuition tells them something good has to come of it all, and something does, even if it's just the ability to better predict in a context far out on the Tail.

I have an idea for a book along these lines I think you might be interested in, something on the order of Tracy Kidder's, Soul of a New Machine. I'd be happy to share it with you if you like.