Information and Affirmation

@timrayner01 points out that so-called information-sharing is never neutral, disengaged - it is a positive act of communication.

"Don’t think of what you share as information. Even if what you share is information, by sharing it, you are telling the world that it is information that you affirm in some way. It is the affirmation that counts. We share what we love. Even when we share details about things we despise, they are things we love to hate. Love is the key to understanding how we contribute to social media commons. We populate the commons with expressions of love."

Tim Rayner, The gift shift: what’s social about social media? (August 2012) 

So even scorn is a form of affirmation. The comedian who devotes his spleen to the latest reality show is thereby contributing (in a complex post-modern fashion) to the show's success. Daniel Smith describes this as alternative consumption, and sees Charlie Brooker as a modern version of Baudelaire.

Daniel Smith, Spleen and Modernity: Baudelaire and ‘alternative’ consumption (July 2010)

The Royal Television Society may pretend that Charlie Brooker represents the high-brow alternative to Simon Cowell.  But Brooker's material is basically the same as Cowell's, it just has a different sentiment. They obviously need each other.

Jonathan Harwood, Cowell and Morgan beaten by Brooker and Theroux (The Week March 2010)

Demise of TV watching?

Some time ago, Michael Goldhaber (author of the attention economy) wrote about the demise of TV watching.

His point - the ability to watch stuff when you feel like it means you may actually watch less.

• Photocopying or filing articles or downloading or bookmarking to read later.
• Taping programmes to record later.

In the early days of home videotaping, television professionals were among the early adopters. They would ask one another "did you see my programme last night?" and the answer was always "not yet, but I've recorded it". A perfect and tactful excuse.

It's hardly cricket

originally posted by John

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Playing it, reading about it, watching it – both live and on telly - cricket has played a big part in my life. It’s always been important to me without ever being serious - a magical thing. The same goes for lots of people I suspect. In many ways it’s our national game and as such it isn’t easy to fit it into the trust space. For those to whom it was important it was somehow transcendent in terms of trust.


At least it was before the game’s venal owners flogged off test match broadcasting rights to Sky. Now its position is simple: deep in the dark boundary corner where intense commodity meets intense authority. The very place occupied by the mocked, inauthentic Fox News. Where Rupert Murdoch reigns supreme and no sensible person would ever trust going.


Goodbye old friend it's a sad day.