Learn From It

Have you see the Napster To Go [Away?] ads? Here's the marketing mathematics:

iTunes + iPod = $10,000 (to fill an iPod from iTMS)
[various clunky MP3 players] + Napster = $15/month

Isn't that interesting? Oh My Goddess, you mean I can just spend $15 per month—why, that's only 50¢ a day!—instead of ten thousand dollars to have full use of my iPod? Why, this can't lose!

Now, there are many times where I see certain similar patterns in very different domains. This is just the garden-variety human ability to abstract and generalize; this is just one mechanism of learning.

I knew that Napster's math was off of reality for a few reasons, but the pattern of this struck me more fundamentally that just a lame attempt by an also-ran to grab attention to itself. There are other examples of this line of thought, but they're boring.

No, the more interesting part of this is what compromises Napster is making of itself here in order to compete with a more natural model (i.e., ownership). It's the same compromise of ethic that many of the religions—or at least the most visible and extremist members of such religions—are making: they're trading long-held ethics for the shot at a Transient More. They've traded their own morality, their own compassion, in favor of political prepotence. A ridiculously unworthy trade, but there they are, giving away their own permanence in favor of cheap shots at homosexuals, punishment of women who dare believe they should have a say over their own reproductive systems. Make no mistake...these religious types are the modern day Pharisees...they are the money-changers in the temple. They are the Caesar that the fringy, unwashed hippies and other liberals are supposed to be rendering unto.

Rome has come and gone (though it's making a return these days), but the Christians had endured because they chose the path of permanence. And now they're cashing in.

So you Napsters out there, pay your $15/month. Five years from now, you'll have paid out $900 and if you stop paying, or more likely, if Napster shuts down, you're out $900. If I buy $15 worth of songs from iTunes Music Store every month, after 5 years I'll have 900 more songs. Oh, you'll still have all those old songs too, the ones that Napster doesn't want you to remember you have, but you're throwing your energy away while I am investing mine.

So you Christians out there, pay your political dues and cash in. Years from now, you'll have emptied your moral and ethical stores and if you stop politicking, or more likely, if your party comes crashing down, you're out of all decency. If I continue to do what's right, what's compassionate, what's decent, what's freedom-loving, what's respectful, years from now, I'll have my pride and the world around me will be better because of me. Oh, you'll still have the right to claim a lifelong devotion to the Jesus-meme, the one that the Falwells and Robertsons don't want you to remember you have, but you're throwing all of your energy into their campaigns instead of towards your god, while I, with no god to speak of, am investing in my fellow human beings.

Marketing messages are funny, aren't they?

Posted by Jeff at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

When I was a wee boy back in college, at the beginning of my Sophomore year at Carnegie Mellon University in 1983, I had just sold the TRS-80 computer, printer and floppy disk drives I had bought over the years prior. My computer buying had begun at the tender age of fourteen, when I got my mom to co-sign a bank loan for $600 so that I could buy a computer. I suppose that was also be beginning of my debt.

Money well-spent/well-borrowed, I say! After upgrading the BASIC ROMs on the computer, upgrading the memory—$99 for 16K of RAM—buying an “expansion interface”, an Epson Printer and 2 floppy disk drives to replace the already-past-its-limits cassette drive, and after acquiring several hundred dollars worth of software, I sold the whole mess in 1983 for about $2000.

One day, when CMU had just opened their campus computer store—an unheard-of thing in those days—a few of us decided to check it out. Not much to see, just an office in the “new” office building on campus, painted cinder-block walls stock office desks. We looked at the price list and I had almost immediately decided on an IBM PC with 2 floppy drives and 16K of memory. Oh, and with the IBM display (monochrome, green characters on a black screen). This was going to clock in at around $1600. Fair enough, I figured. I was getting a 6MHz machine for less than I'd sold my 1.77MHz TRS-80.

As we turned to walk back out of the store/office, there on a desk sat a little beige machine with a mostly-white display. With one of those mouse-things attached to it (now, mice I had seen before, down in one of the quasi-subterranean floors of Warner/Science Hall....I wasn't sure what they were for, but a small box with buttons attached to a strange-shaped computer workstation made quite an impression).

A paint program was running. I moved the mouse around and watched the cursor on the little screen follow. I clicked the button; it made a dot on the screen. I held the button down and moved the mouse, and an oval grew from the starting point!

I got the whole catastrophic beauty of this machine in less than a couple of minutes. And on February 7, 1984, just two weeks after the official introduction, I had one in my dorm room.

To this day, I have never regularly used a PC, never bought a PC for myself. I have, however, had upwards of a dozen different Macs.

Apple & the Mac have been significant yardsticks in how I measure the progress of my life, important memory-prods into very specific times in my past and quite a fine ongoing example of majority-minority patterns. In other words, I've learned a lot.

So, Happy 21st Birthday (January 24) to the Macintosh. Click on the young Steve Jobs above to watch a streaming video of the original introduction. You, of course, must have QuickTime installed on your machine—and shame on you if you don't already.

I'm going to go spin the propeller on the little cap on my big head, and try like hell not to shudder when I think of what might not have been...

Posted by Jeff at 09:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)