Distribute and Be Damned 45
often correct – in an admittedly somewhat broad and essentially vague
way: his notion of the Daily Me, for example, foreshadowed mass personalisation of news media, and he correctly assumed that some form of
touch technology would replace what he saw as the mediocre interface
of mouse and keyboard for the vast majority of users. At this point, however, I wish to concentrate on one particular prediction of Negroponte’s
which has proved to be much more ambiguous. Discussing the work of
The New York Times writer, John Markoff (who covered tech reporting
for the newspaper until his retirement in 2016), Negroponte suggested
that he would be willing to pay Markoff a literal – rather than proverbial –
two cents for his copy were it ever to be disintermediated from The New
York Times and to become part of a personalised Daily Me:
If one two-hundredths of the 1995 Internet population were to subscribe to this idea and John were to write a hundred stories a year
(he actually writes between one-hundred-twenty and one-hundredforty), he would earn $1,000,000 per year, which I am prepared to
guess is more than The New York Times pays him. If you think one
two-hundredth is too big a proportion, then wait a short while. The
numbers really do work. Once somebody is established, the added
value of a distributor is less and less in a digital world.
23
Except that the numbers (on the whole) do not work: the distributors
simply changed rather than disappeared. Negroponte assumed that technical solutions that were regularly being applied in the field of computer
and communication sciences would transfer easily across social and
economic boundaries. His major assumption around the possibility of
micropayments was optimistic to say the least. By 2004, the IEEE had
scathingly attacked micropayments as an idea whose time had passed –
twice.
24
While PayPal (originally Confinity) was established precisely as
a means to enable seamless transfer of payments, credit systems such as
Visa and the major international banks still dominate the process with
a series of charges that are designed to make it as profitable to them as
possible: as such, 2 cents to John Markoff has really never figured as part
of their business plans.
While the economic model does not provide a direct living wage for
most writers, bloggers, and vloggers, those who do manage to profit by
creating content – in a few cases even becoming millionaires – do so from
what are, in effect, micropayments handled via another source. This, in
turn, draws attention to the second fallacy of Negroponte’s statement
that distribution is less and less important in adding value. In 1995, Negroponte made two significant assumptions: first of all, that the future
constituency of the Internet would be similar to the tech-savvy audience
that had used it from the late sixties until that point, and that secondly
his unbounded faith in established capitalism would make it open to
often correct – in an admittedly somewhat broad and essentially vague
way: his notion of the Daily Me, for example, foreshadowed mass personalisation of news media, and he correctly assumed that some form of
touch technology would replace what he saw as the mediocre interface
of mouse and keyboard for the vast majority of users. At this point, however, I wish to concentrate on one particular prediction of Negroponte’s
which has proved to be much more ambiguous. Discussing the work of
The New York Times writer, John Markoff (who covered tech reporting
for the newspaper until his retirement in 2016), Negroponte suggested
that he would be willing to pay Markoff a literal – rather than proverbial –
two cents for his copy were it ever to be disintermediated from The New
York Times and to become part of a personalised Daily Me:
If one two-hundredths of the 1995 Internet population were to subscribe to this idea and John were to write a hundred stories a year
(he actually writes between one-hundred-twenty and one-hundredforty), he would earn $1,000,000 per year, which I am prepared to
guess is more than The New York Times pays him. If you think one
two-hundredth is too big a proportion, then wait a short while. The
numbers really do work. Once somebody is established, the added
value of a distributor is less and less in a digital world.
23
Except that the numbers (on the whole) do not work: the distributors
simply changed rather than disappeared. Negroponte assumed that technical solutions that were regularly being applied in the field of computer
and communication sciences would transfer easily across social and
economic boundaries. His major assumption around the possibility of
micropayments was optimistic to say the least. By 2004, the IEEE had
scathingly attacked micropayments as an idea whose time had passed –
twice.
24
While PayPal (originally Confinity) was established precisely as
a means to enable seamless transfer of payments, credit systems such as
Visa and the major international banks still dominate the process with
a series of charges that are designed to make it as profitable to them as
possible: as such, 2 cents to John Markoff has really never figured as part
of their business plans.
While the economic model does not provide a direct living wage for
most writers, bloggers, and vloggers, those who do manage to profit by
creating content – in a few cases even becoming millionaires – do so from
what are, in effect, micropayments handled via another source. This, in
turn, draws attention to the second fallacy of Negroponte’s statement
that distribution is less and less important in adding value. In 1995, Negroponte made two significant assumptions: first of all, that the future
constituency of the Internet would be similar to the tech-savvy audience
that had used it from the late sixties until that point, and that secondly
his unbounded faith in established capitalism would make it open to