The Google Gods

I'm watching Biography entitled The Google Boys and, fifty minutes in, before the IPO, I've already changed the title. These boys are already taking charge. If knowledge is power, and it is... these two have a lot of both. Let's hope their ideals remain high and pure. They both come from academic, not corporate families. One even has communist roots. Are the Google gods all-loving and benevolent?

Now they will be integrating all or part of the library collections of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, U Mich (Page's alma mater) and NY Public Library into their indexes. Amazon.com already has a Search Inside a Book program allowing users to find any passage in one of Amazon's books.

What fascinates me most is the search concept and execution, and their philosophy. The difference between their search and that of Yahoo & other previous methods reminds me of the discussion I just engaged in about the paintings. One was all linear and set apart, the other was organic and connected. Yahoo employed thousands of human librarians to visually inspect all web pages and classify them. Google sent out millions of spider bots to check out all the web pages and how many times they are clicked on, uses algorithms to add points for things like having certain terms highlighted on the site or having other sites with links to yours, and tabulates... a popularity contest. They are extremely attentive to speed. The graphic Biography used looked like that Disney ride where your little spaceship enters the dark universe of linked up lights...technology moves us into the future. The Google Galaxy.

I date a guy who works with companies to develop their web presence. All advertising, and much economic, growth is in this area. When I started my Adsense account, to track how many hits I was getting on the blog, I was surprised at how guys as smart as Sergi & Larry could put ads of companies seeking to protect intellectual property on my blog. I mean, if you look at the blog, you can see the... er...irony there. He explained to me that the IP protectors bid more for search terms like film and music, which is largely what this site is about. Interesting, I guess it's clear who's got the most cash in this game.

After a month of bad ads, over which I had no control, I notice they are putting up very appropriate ads, like one for Eternal Sunshine, a movie I reviewed here. So, if you scroll down to the bottom of this blog you'll see the ads. I do control the placement, I could make the ads more intrusive & dominant on the blog, change color, size, & number of ads, but I have no control over which ads pop up there. I would love to understand if they really do have some way of finding out that the folks who read my blog might actually want a quick link to the Sunshine rental site, but might not be too motivated, after reading my blog, to go out and protect a bunch of intellectual property. After all, the beauty of Google advertising (and the key to its success) is the idea that companies can direct their ads toward the people most likely to want their services or products. Are the Google Gods omniscient?

I started this blog as an exercise, to speak my mind, record thoughts. It's all there on the first post. Now I've develped a Mission Statement, which I'll soon publish. Blogging was not to make money, but, I'm thankful for an easy way to not only track traffic but make a whopping $53.88, more than I've made off my art or film so far. I get money sometimes when people click on those ads. Not when I click on the ads, that I know. Others, it seems to totally depend, on what, I don't know. Sometimes I get like $4. a click, other times it's under $1. Why? I'd love to know, but like everyone else, probably never will. The Google gods are very mysterious. Maybe they rate each clicker by how much they earn or click or buy, or when they click. I do know that companies have paid third world clickers to make real money off phony clicking. I'm sure Google has many sophisticated algorithms to make sure each click represents a viable customer.

Anyway, it's astounding that you can actually grow a business this way. With absolutely no advertising, most of my friends don't even have my site address, my site is now the #11 search result on Google for the search term intervision. Do you know what this means? Again, I'm not totally sure, and it may change every day, but, I'll tell you this... it fuckin blew me away, that's for sure. Especially as I'm watching this Biography saying that lots of people are employed full time trying to get companies in the top five search results. Now, those may well be more commercial search terms.

Compared to moving boxes, there aren't as many people out there searching for "intervision". It's not even a real word, for god's sake. Only the select few, like you, and a growing throng, know what it means, and certainly not every shmuck out there is willing to blog away hours of their time to educate the public about their rights & do it so rudely for $53.88. But seriously, there are 93k sites with the term, many companies & organizations use it and of them mine is #11 in terms of activity and links.(?) So. for this little site, with one page (sites with multiple pages get many more clicks) to come in #11 out of 93,000 is pretty amazing, especially since I've never paid Google a cent....I only blog on a site they own and make money off.

And I plan to make it more visible by re-conneting with people from Ipac (which alredy has my link on their blog), EFF, Free Culture, Downhill Battle etc. to link to my site, as I've recently added links from mine to theirs. The more you are linked up in the world-wide-web, the better., at least in Googleland, maybe every land. So please, if you like what you read, pass it on, tell a friend, put a link on your website. It's important to spread the word on issues like this. It's hard to post comments on these Blogspot blogs, I guess you have to open a blogspot to do it, and some have opened blogs in order to comment here, which is a good thing. Anyway, you can email me at Intervision428@yahoo.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

It seems that the Google gods are determined that the unpaid placements should be fairly earned and keep changing the algorithms to make sure that interested entities don't artificially stack the results. They've done this several times and Biography liked them to hurricanes. Apparently, after the last one, many sites that had come up in the number one or two spot got lost into the webosphere. Proving, don't mess with forces of nature. The Google gods are omnipotent.

So, if you want to win the visibility game, Google's way, you have to pay (the most), or make your site something folks want to visit, or, get lots of other sites to link to yours. Again, it does seem the Google gods like fairness, level playing field, accessible auction thing, just like with their IPO.

When I sold advertising space for Personal Computing, we were the largest circulation PC magazine and our biggest selling point was our CPM, that's how almost all advertising is valued - cost per thousand eyeballs. There's usually a volume discount, our CPM was the lowest of all competitors. That's why big, general advertisers love hit magazines, hit shows. They talk about the big ticket Superbowl ads, but they're probably some of the most cost-effective ads out there.

Now you can go not only for general sector and eyeballs, but for very targeted audiences, fairly easily. And you can pay for only live leads, someone actually clicking onto your site, as opposed to exposure, which does not always transfer to sales. So, while Google now makes 1/3 of it's income from Adwords, I would expect that to grow. And I expect that more and more individuals will start putting up a web presence and look for the like minded. It's Google's job to put your ad in front of those most likely to click on it, and you don't pay till they do. It's straight commission, they don't get paid till someone clicks on you, so they need to place you well in order to profit off you. Not so with magazines, TV and radio.

So, Google stock is still skyrocketing, they're now bringing the libraries online, as the US empire declines, China and Google rise. They seem to mean it about the progressive work environment, fostering collaboration and creativity over competition, lots of toys and games, and best of all, their head chef is the guy that used to cook for the Grateful Dead.

They also have Dave Drummond, a nice guy, who just won them a summary judgment in three days against Geico, who sued them because they allow competitors to bid for paid placement on their search results page.

Anyway, Blogger, which hosts this blog, is....you guessed it....a small group within Google, which bought their company a few years ago. How did I find out about Blogger? I Googled "blog", it came up as #1 for both paid AND unpaid...how very shocking. #4 was the Blogger Google Blog. Now maybe you understand why my blog came up #11.

Hopefully, I'll soon be able to upload music and do something about the bland visuals (maybe they like it that way, just my countercultural rants and their ads). Yes, Google is omnipresent. Their link is above, tell them you found out about their site through me. They'll be so happy. Yes, I'm proselytizing for Google, so they may rain appropriate algorithms upon me. I hope they keep up with Yahoo which is now making it easier to search videos.

Anyway, you know whose blog came up as #7? Lawrence Lessig! See, people want and need to know. His blog isn't even that great. Hank, consider this a personal appeal, your voice is needed, you'll feel better.

APart:Heart

APart:Heart
Originally uploaded by Intervisions.

As I mentioned in my Start:Heart post, I was thinking about doing an opposite piece next. Something sparer, more defined. Whereas Start:Heart's lines constantly intersect in what Dave Matthews would call "the space between" (I would, of course, call it the intervision) this next piece would be, essentially a series of separate, distinct objects. I thought about entitling it A Part:Heart to emphasize the sense that although each of the separate hearts shows whole, they are really parts. Then I thought about Apart:Heart to highlight the separateness. I compromised, hoping to spur the viewer to think of both meanings and, yes, the relationship (or intervision) between them.

I mean, when we are not feeling whole internally, does that help or hurt our sense of being part of the community? I guess it depends on the community. Many times, in many cultures, I think of the Japanese culture, the need for conformity compels individuals to be the herd animals humans can instinctively be. We all grow up in families and need to conform to their expectations. That doesn't necessarily mean our own spirits are whole within that. So, it's a comment on the individual's relationship to the community. Communities that operate like efficient beehives can foster apart hearts. Other groups can produce things more cooperatively. For example, I will probably do a post on this specifically but, I compare this group of actors I'm watching on This So-Called Diaster, rehearsing a play, to the groups on The Apprentice. On the Apprentice you have to be constantly on guard, always putting yourself subltly or not subtly above others. In the play, they're all hanging out, exploring characters, having fun, encouraging each other.

It's also meant to show progression of stages through life. As opposed to Start:Heart, messy, vibrant, colorful...full, APart:Heart looks like a series of bonbons, especially the early ones. There is a lot of "dead air" on this canvas, lots of space between, and even the live areas are flat. The hearts don't touch or intersect, they each hang from their own separate ribbon, that's what supports each one. In the earlier piece the various shapes had a series of colorful borders edging it out to the pool of colors and the shapes, though distinct, seem to touch each other in many places, at least on their outskirts.

Podcasting

Ever wonder why you were put here? Well, it's stuff like this that makes me think I was put here to watch this amazing explosion of technology meets creativity meets community. Podcasting, essentially, is to radio what blogging is to books. It's easier, faster, more approachable. As they put it in the Christian Science Monitor (link above), aspiring directors have iMovie, aspiring writers have blogging and now aspiring DJs have podcasting. I actually wonder about the "aspiring". In my book, if you direct a film, you're a director, regardless of the size of its audience.

So, podcasting allows someone, with the right software, computer & mikes, to format and "broadcast" their own radio shows. It's done through the internet and offers more of the flexibility of say, TiVo, than traditional radio. No commercials, just the rantings of whoever is putting the playlist out there.

Well, I guess you can all see the handwriting on the wall....where do I sign up? All these new mediums opening up are like manna from heaven for a ham like me. Long before I had the balls to sing, I was definitely broadcasting my very good taste in music, and my breathy on-air voice all over town. It's great to have people always walking up to you telling you they enjoyed your show. Now again, I'm having people tell me they like my art on the blog. It's a trip, so I definitely understand how exciting it is for folks to have mediums that were previously reserved for the few to now be open.

As time goes on, I think we'll get further away from mass culture. Where we now spend most of our time absorbing big news & big entertainment, in the future we'll be spending about a third on the mass culture stuff, a third on local or "garage band" level input and a third of our time creating our own output.

It keeps getting easier to make our own custom content, a collage of our interests....slideshows, playlists, films, effects, titles.... and you can mix and match this stuff onto websites and soon it'll be easier to blog that stuff. It's also getting more approachable in terms of music production. CG, modeling, composing etc.

Anyway, I'm starting to get a little hot just thinking about all this. I mean, if, using the handy dandy new ipodder software, I put together a show of say the REAL Greatest 500 Songs (see RS rant) and put it out there and you sign up... does that mean you now "own" those 500 songs on your own ipod?? If so, what will darling RIAA have to say about that?!

So, what can you put on these podcasts? Anything that won't bring the copyright police? One band I sing with does originals, so it wouldn't even make Hillary mad. Come to think of it, bands will have these as easily as they now have websites. Only it'll go directly onto your ipod.

Now that I think of it, I have some quotes on this blog. They're all credited, but I didn't ask the author's permission, or pay them. Though I did spread the word about how meaningful their quote is. Now, I doubt Buffy St. Marie or Peter Fonda will come after me... but what if I quote Hilllary Rosen or one of the other champions of big business ownership of content?

Emergence

Emergence
Originally uploaded by Intervisions.

Super-Size This

Super-Size Me and This So-Called Disaster... looks like these two will duke it out for Best Documentary since Moore pulled Farenheit 911 from the category in order to pursue a shot at the Best Picture Oscar, which he should get. 2004 could easily be called the year of the documentary. Super-Size got a super duper reception because Farenheit 911 made it cool to speak out again. The blue-state baby showed that lots of Americans are willing to cough up $10. to hear the truth cause it's the only place left we can get it. Clearly, neither Farenheit or Super could have gotten traditional financing or distribution, much less ever have seen the light of day on our airwaves, or cable, or anything supported by corporate America, which is pretty much everything. For Farenheit to make $120M is staggering, and really says a lot about the quality of information disseminated in this country. Even big budget films are thrilled to break the $100M mark.


This So-Called Disaster shows the three weeks of rehearsal leading up to the opening of The Late Henry Moss, a play by Sam Shepherd performed in 2000 in San Francisco by Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and others. No lightweights here. Shepherd is arguably one of our greatest living playwrights and Penn one of our greatest actors... and it's certainly in evidence here as the play deals with Shepherd's relationship with his alcoholic father, who died in 1984. Although Shepherd is a thoughtful introspective writer, it took him 16 years to be able to put this story down, understand it, grapple with it. It's like the expression that the last thing a fish can see is water. The really big things that color our life and perceptions - those are the hardest things to see and understand. Most of us just keep reenacting our childhoods one way or another, until we can see it in perspective.

The film brought back a lot of memories for me of my time spent in near-empty theatres acting, directing, hanging out, hanging lights, making the soundtrack. It's a huge effort, magical and worth it to watch a story come to life. My time constraints and ADD propel me to tell my stories on film now, but it's amazing to watch the raw power of these actors, stripped of film's accouterments, sort of like the movie Dogville, with its barren set. You're watching some guy clump around a barren stage, but it's Sean Penn acting. Acting is such a collaborative art but at it's heart is the actors abillity to get real and express that. It's powerful to watch a good actor act. OK, but here's music's ultimate trump, if I could have a choice of Brad Pitt or Usher perform for me, personally, gotta go Usher.

So, now for the real meat of this post, Super-Size Me. If you haven't already heard, it's about this guy who eats nothing but McDonalds for a month and trashes his health. I would love to see a Super-Size 911 treatment of a number of other atrocities to the public in the name of profit: alcohol, tobacco, legal drugs and, yes, the one I really want to see, enough to make it myself, the one that shows the music business for what it really is. Bowling For Columbine and Roger & Me both exposed pressing problems successfully. In fact, today, Dec. 27, (remember, I update these posts) word is out that Moore is about to target this legal drug mess in his next film...bravo.

If there is anything super sized it is the problem of obesity in this country, 60% of all American adults are overweight. Now, you will not find a stronger advocate of personal responsibility than me. I guarantee it. I decided at a young age that the only aspects of your life you can control are those that you take responsibility for. I lived for many years with someone who took no responsibility for his actions, so my feelings on this are very strong. And while overweight people are certainly responsible for their condition, the folks that add all these addictive and fattening ingredients to our food are also responsible. The government agencies who are supposed to be paid by the public and protecting them, but who instead allow the practices and cover-ups to go on have much bigger failed responsibilities.

Much of the issue, for me, has to do with transparency & disclosure, putting the real story out there. Farenheit & Super-Size were successful because they gave the public information that had been kept from them. Most people are weak, easily led, easily exploited. Want proof? Half of our population is obese. Not one of those people wants to be obese, I doubt those people became obese on natural foods. They ate foods processed and promoted by big companies belonging to GMA, the grocery lobby. The diet industry alone is a 35 billion dollar business.

There is plenty of blame to go around but, in my mind, companies will always seek a profit, it is the government's job to protect the public. As long as we allow these powerful lobbies in DC we are going to continue to see our "protectors" at the beck and call of corporate interests. Meanwhile these corporate suppliers mess with our food supply to make food more addictive & fattening. There is simply no other way to explain the sudden rise of obesity over the past 30 years, and it is, in fact mentioned in all the literature on the subject. Obesity is about to pass tobacco as the leading cause of preventable death in this country. The CDC is about to lower the life expectancy. For the first time a generation will not expect to live longer than its parents. These are serious problems.

I blame the companies primarily for marketing so seductively to children. Commercial time to them won't get curtailed without public pressure on legislators because the networks make huge money from food related ads. Even a diligent parent has to send their kid to school, where there is lots of very unhealthy stuff, even here in Palo Alto, where my friend JudyAnn and many others went to great pains to put better food choices in the schools. But, they come into these strapped districts (they're all strapped, even here) with "free money". Only it's not free, the money going into those machines is coming from us. We did get the soda out of the schools last year, but, this is Palo Alto, not a particularly typical town. We've kept out Wal-mart and a lot of box retailers, we had Cable Co-op for a long time, etc.

These big food companies constantly advertise to children, not just McDonalds but every tasty treat you could imagine. The average child sees 10k commercials per year, 95% of which are for high sugar/fat processed foods. I have to keep what little processed, commercial type food there is where the kids can't get it without my permission. It tastes great. It should, they spend millions to make it that way, fat & sugar naturally taste good. At the same time the government doesn't crack down on advertising to kids, spiking our food or failing to inform, it makes schools test the hell out of these kids academically so that they cut PE & recess (but not lunch) in favor of test-taking classwork. One third of all children born in 2000 are expected to get diabetes in their lifetime.

The best part of the DVD is the interview with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, who refused to participate until he saw how successful the film was. He discussed the relationship between Ray Kroc & Walt Disney, friends who shared a desire to market a fairy tale version of the world to children, a belief in better living through chemistry and technology and a Nazi style of management.

He says that agriculture has changed more in the last 30 years than it had in the previous 30k as this heavliy tested, processed, uniform, gargantuan Disneyite food product grew in popularity. In 30 years we went from a few hundred outlets to 30,000 McDonalds alone. A typical hamburger today contains over 1,000 cows, any one of whom could have mad cow disease or ecoli. The goal is to make a uniform, good-tasting & inexpensive product. It's all one big, bland morass of goo, laden with, literally thousands of chemicals. It reminds me of my 80 Days post about the guy who wanted to find the "average color of Palo Alto". Let's get out the blender to make our melting pot, at least it tastes good and is fast, right?

Now real food can't compete price-wise and the system has been co-opted, again, by a relative few who now have a huge amount of power to direct the food supply. The cost of all this is borne by society who are all but voiceless to a nameless, blameless (but tasty) problem. The poor, of course take it the worst because, we all know what fast food is don't we? It's poor man's food. But, it's spreading, throughout the food chain. You can still cull the top, organic, natural etc., but, I eat out a lot, who knows what's going on there? We're all connected and so is our food.

I was talking about this with a friend last night. He's a biochemist and said the reason kids are maturing at younger ages these days is due to the growth hormones in our food. He also said they had to change the parameters for post-mortem libidity. Dead bodies decay slower now than they used to because of the preservatives we ingest in the foods we eat. So, I would say, avoid McDonalds like the plague if only on the basis that they treat their employees like shit (for example, if a location tries to unionize, they close it). Avoid processed foods, especially those labeled "diet", try to keep everything as natural as you can but hey, every day is a risk. I am at least a moderate, if not high risk taker and I'm sorry, but when it comes to my food, I like it good.... and McDonalds is definitely NOT my idea of good, no matter how you look at it.

There is a ton of important information in this DVD that affects everyone. We live in a world where Mc Donalds and other huge chains literally dominate our landscape. We all eat this food, live off it. Every day, one fourth of our population eats in a fast food restaurant, 40% of which are McDonalds. Why isn't this information getting out there? Why is eating all this stuff not looked upon the way smoking or drinking is looked at? It's clearly a bigger killer. It's the media! No matter what show you produce, it's going to have to go through some major outlet, from ABC to A&E, they all rely on this sector for a huge chunk of their advertising, these commercials are absolutely pervasive in our culture, which is all that sustains these networks. They are often cash cows for the conglomerates that own them because that's where all the big companies plow their profits. McDonalds and Pepsi both spend more than a billion dollars a year on advertising. How do food companies continue to show growth? Well, that's a good question, one not asked my the movie. After all, the population isn't growing. We're just buying more and more food to feed the same amount of people.

A nice fat, drugged out population will sit in front of the TV & watch their commercials. If something goes wrong with your body, and it will, consume some of the many drugs you'll see advertised there. I mean, is this where our economic growth is going? It's where our country is going. Fat and happy Americans electing fortunate son liars to drop bombs around to show our weight.

Corporate America Rocks

I read about this film in Indie Slate (link is above), not your most mainstream of magazines, but, it's a great story, so here it is, of course, in a nutshell.

About 20 years ago these guys in Denver tried to make some lame music video of their band. So, this film, Corporate America Rocks, is about these same guys, now sort of corporate misfits, who put the band back together and then win a Battle of the Bands. They used their old footage and tons of underused talent in Denver that is left over from their own boom times, mortgaged their houses to the hilt, whipped up tons of enthusiam for filmmaking in Denver, including half the city for some huge Battle of the Bands scene, and now they're on the road with their film. Pretty amazing, huh? There is a ton of underused film talent around here too, but it is becoming more and more utilized and the community is pretty extensive and thriving as it's easier to get a foothold here than in Hollywood. It's nice to see the opportunities spreading out... we don't need to get all our entertainment from Hollywood and all our culture from New York.

Anyway, I love this Dad/corportate wonk band concept. Probably a third of all the Palo Alto bands I know of are Dad's bands and at one time, we were planning some city-wide battle of the Dad's bands (who knew we were overlooking a great movie opportunity?) What's a Dad's band? A band of Dads, family guys, around here, executive types. In fact, the first band I ever sang with was the pentultimate Dad's band. It should be a movie in itself, business movers & shakers strumming their old favorite songs together for school fundraisers. It was quite the juxtaposition. First of all, these guys, many of whom were allowed to their echelons on the basis of their supposed management skills, certainly didn't exhibit them, seeming quite convinced they were titans of industry, kings of the housewife set AND good musicians, regardless of reality. Sometimes things go to people's heads and it would be interesting to see how this group would come across on film.

As the internet grows and the economy slows, we're getting more and more starter art. People are finding others who are interested in making art, so more and better projects are starting, particularly in film and with bands, both of which require collaboration. There are more and more sites to help people find, grow and promote creative projects.

Maybe there will always be blockbusters, and hit songs and shows that everyone will want to have seen and discuss around the watercooler. I'm hoping though that awareness of these grass-roots level art enterprises will grow and that people will have interest in smaller projects. This blog, for example, averages 40 hits a day on nothing other than word of mouth. And, despite my disinterest in Martha Stewart's wares, her concept of omnimedia, mutually promotional, symbiotic projects, is a good one. In my case, I basically promote my art and film projects on the blog, and will promote my band too, when we're ready to gig.

Artists are more frequently using the internet to promote their projects; Blair Witch Project got to a pretty visible level that way. All this reality TV also takes it down a notch, we're getting more and more used to being entertained by reality. Think about our entertainment in the 40's and 50's, we had whites playing people of color, June Cleaver doing housework in heels and pearls...very glossy, unreal stuff. But, now people can handle reality better, so projects can be very approachable from a production viewpoint. At the same time, you can do almost professional quality CG, modeling, special effects & editing with a G5, or even a G4.

As I ended college we were still coming out of a bad recession and I remember someone in one of my classes saying, you know maybe there's something good about recessions. I looked around at the economic devastation and thought she was out of her mind. But, in the economic downturns we've been through in the past 20 yrs., her comment keeps coming back to me. Things keep cycling around, there have been upturns and downs. And, it tends to be those down times where people turn to the Dad's bands, to music and art and quality of life, to taking off work, mortgaging your house and making a movie about your band.