Idealism
I’ve been seeing more and more talk lately about the coming dominance of the “app,” over the open Web. The most recent example was this article in the Atlantic. In a way, I think it’s a little funny how quick everyone is to make predictions based on the latest trends. But I also find this potential future quite depressing. It’s a future in which the entire web has become little more than a consuming device, a future that looks disturbingly like the past when we had 3 TV networks, and very specific and tightly controlled channels for getting information. And none of those channels were operating in our interest.
One of the things that’s disparaged the most about the “open Web” is the lack of accountability in news reporting. Bloggers who post anything are seen as an erosion to “journalism.” However, I think this is largely false, as the history of traditional journalism shows that it’s made up largely of lies and propaganda with only a few sparks of actual, vital truth in between. Furthermore, can anyone point to a local newscast as worth…well, anything worthy at all? What I like about the “open Web” is that it forces us all to be more diligent about what we take in. It forces us to be more educated and to think for ourselves. And if we read something at one source, we can take the time to find it on many other sources and validate it. Of course that’s the ideal, and not everyone does take the time to do it, but I like having the ability to do that.
When I read about the coming “app” model, all I can think is that people are once more going to be sacrificing choice for comfort. Brian Newman said it better in a recent DIYDays speech:
If all we get from this revolution is a fancy, internet connected TV set that allows us to watch any film ever made, anytime we want, on demand we will have failed to innovate. Yeah, like Memorex, it will really blow our minds, but it’s not mind-blowing. It’s easy to get caught up in this and think this is the goal, but TV Everywhere will just be annoying things like being able to watch whatever we want and comment on it via Twitter or FourSquare, and buy whatever the characters are wearing, or make catty comments about it.
But at the end of the day, that’s a pretty boring vision for the future. That’s not the innovation we want or deserve. If all we get is that fancy TV set, or if we just settle for getting our films on VOD or Netflix, we’ll have failed to live up to the potential of digital and the internet. This is dangerous, because we let our vision of the future be limited by our views of the past. We as artists must get involved before this settles into what Jaron Lanier calls “lock-in” where we design the entire system in such a way that to change it at a later date will be impossible.
On a Technical Level…
I’m not so sure I buy into this app model. It’s good for some things, but I don’t see it for the bulk of what the web is good for. I for one, hate having nine millions fucking icons on my phone, each one going to a separate site, essentially. Because what most apps are, are basically mobile versions of websites. Just about any content app is this. So now, instead of having something as simple as “bookmarks” for my favorite places on the web, I have nine million fucking apps. This is stupid, and inefficient beyond belief. There’s only so much room on my phone. And it’s annoying as hell to have to scroll through page after page after page of apps to find something. Then I forget that some apps are there. And I don’t look at them for a long time. As where, a simple RSS feed delivers me the daily updates to whatever I want to see.
Secondly, I can attest from being out there in the market pitching apps to potential clients, that while everyone thinks they need an app now, no one wants to pay for one. It’s very very hard to get clients to put real resources into this. Because they don’t quite understand how it really, honestly impacts their business. And they’re right. We’ve been trying to pitch unique ideas for interface, and for app functionality, and it’s still very very hard to make them see where there is any value in these things. Value worth spending their budgets on. Because for about 90% of the apps out there, you can get exactly the same thing from a simple mobile template on your existing website.
No, I think this whole “shoving apps down our throat by one company and pretending it’s some kind of trend” reeks of what it is: the publishing companies trying to turn back the clock. And when I see the apps they’re making for the iPad, I think: “Wow, they are really trying to turn back the clock. This is about as good as a web-browsing experience from 1994.” And really? Ads I can’t turn past? Guys, even in print magazines I can turn past the ads I don’t want to look at.
The publishing industry is being characteristically lazy about this whole thing. They’ve been told that all they have to do is translate their mags into apps and they will be able to go on doing what they do. Once again, they’re missing the boat. Instead of innovating their way out of a problem, they are falling back on a lock-down solution. And what’s so frustrating about this is that this same industry was one of the first to experiment with digital delivery of content in the 80s, for God’s sake. They’ve not only seen this coming, but have had all the time in the world to innovate out of it. yet time and time again, they seem to ignore what’s coming and try to turn the clock back to what’s already been. This will not work.
Instead, I would like to see the publishing industry embrace what I am increasingly calling the “make cooler shit” model. Like this:
Now, this doesn’t actually exist on the iPad yet, which is the mistake they made here, I think. But one of my partners was able to make an interface surprisingly similar for the iPhone using what technologies are currently allowed. Pretty cool stuff.
Advertising, Spawn of Satan, likewise has a beautiful chance to innovate here. Instead of forcing us to watch your crap through pop-ups, overlays, or iPad pages that freeze, why not create something actually cool? I know this is a foreign concept for most people in advertising where the industry survived for decades by forcing us to watch stupid shit. But some people are doing it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ3D4CqHbJM[/youtube]
That is an ad for a TV. You never see a TV in the ad. You don’t even know what company it’s advertising for, do you? But once I had my mind blown by this, I sure as hell went to find out. And you know what, I had a lot more respect for the company for not treating my like a moron, for not trying to convince me that if I just buy their product, my cock will magically be sucked by 19 horny virgin cheerleaders in succession. I had more respect for them for not lying to me. But just making something whose goal was to show me how great their product was. Whoa, selling products based on their merits? Who’d a thunk it?
Then there was Old Spice approaching things from the goof-side, and making something both funny and cool. Funny because, well, it’s funny. Cool, because of the geek-out factor of it’s creation.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE[/youtube]
Made by Weiden & Kennedy, this again is something innovative. Entertain me with something amazing and I will likely have more respect for you. And it also shows how hip Old Spice is to let the agency go to town with something like this.
Finally, there’s the Liquid Mountaineering commercial:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3St1GgoHQ[/youtube]
Again, not trying to shove the product down your throat, but making something so cool you kind of have to go find out about it. You want to know who’s behind this. You want to pass it around. Because it’s awesome.
So this is my hope for both the publishing and advertising industries; instead of trying to lock things down, make them lame and boring like every iPad magazine app I’ve seen now, please learn out how innovate your way into the future. Or just go out of business please.