The more observant among you will be aware that late last week, Addiply dipped another tiny, tiny toe into the world of hyper-local media when Guardian News & Media opted to give the system a trial on their own, new ‘Local’ sites in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Leeds.
Indeed, a couple of days later and we even had our very first £20 per week advertiser in the shape of http://www.readersheds.co.uk/
Who knows what that means for any of us in the medium-to-long term. For now, it remains little more than a trial. A suck-it-and-see operation on the part of GNM – wedded, like the rest of us, to this idea that if nothing works, everything might…. that now is, indeed, the time for 000s of little experiments; of which the Addiply/GuardianLocal tie-in is just one.
So, we’ll see. There will be no promises from our side of the fence that we’re about to change the world.
We’re just in the business of giving publishers, large and small, a new tool to play with in the hope that it might – just – form one possible part of one potential answer.
In that regard it was interesting to note that the start of Emily Bell’s farewell speeches before she disappears to New York to join the likes of Jeff Jarvis and Jay Rosen in the hotbed of US J-School thinking, that she sensed the answer would lie in some form of hybrid model – a bit of this here, a bit of that there… etc, etc…
That there will be no one, single answer to all our web woes; what works for some, won’t work for others.
But what interests me in the midst of this current General Election campaign is just how much of our once-accepted world is now bust – be it morally, financially or, indeed, philosophically, there’s not too much for anyone ‘big’ to shout about.
The world’s biggest investment bank Goldman Sachs is just the latest cornerstone of ‘big’ business to find its very foundations under threat; now to my mind, ‘big’ politics of the two-party variety in the UK is under threat like never before.
The televised leaders’ debates are, in part, to blame.
Suddenly we’re all empowered to see who of our three, potential leaders-elect can actually hold a conversation; who can ‘engage’ us as an audience; an audience weaned for the better part of ten years on such shows as ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and ‘X-Factor’.
And, in many ways, the live debates are no different; who has got Prime Ministerial ‘talent’; which of the three candidates has that ‘X’ factor that marks him out as my preferred candidate?
But – and here’s the ‘big’ problem – the old, electoral system doesn’t ‘fit’ with the way in which we’re now empowered; the level of expectation that comes from us ‘choosing’ a Susan Boyle or a Leona Lewis.
Most people, I suspect, would settle for a phone vote these days; swap Peter Snow and his ’swing-o-meter’ for Simon Cowell and a big, red button and it’d be job done.
As it is, Clegg can sweep the popular vote, but the very nature of this country’s electoral system ensures that he’s got next to no chance of becoming Prime Minister – the man most able to hold a conversation with the people of this country won’t get in.
Because the system – the ‘big’ beast that is two-party politics and first-past-the-post protocols – won’t allow for the collaborative voice of the individual voter to be heard.
And how are individual voters collaborating like never, ever before? Through their alter egos on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace etc etc… this is where the debates are being instantly dissected and opinions shaped or re-inforced. That’s where the consensus is to be found.
Of course there is another fixture in the roster of ‘big’ that are finding life very uncomfortable right now – and that’s the big media beasts of the right for whom this election is not playing out as they demanded.
Because people will no longer do as they are told; just as they won’t watch the news at 6.30pm or wait for the paper boy to deign to show up at 6.30pm every evening, they won’t sit there and be told who to vote for.
Go back – as we all-too often do – to Christopher Hill and this world of ours that is fast turning upside down and it’s there again, this ragged band of Diggers…
…who headed to St George’s Hill intent on defying the landlords, etc..
‘We will not bow to masters
Or pay rent to the lords
We are free men…’
Free to hold our own conversations as to who we think is best suited to life at No10; this assumption by the ‘big’ beasts of the media jungle – be it Murdoch Jnr or Mr Dacre – that we will ‘bow’ to their will is a throw-back to another age.
When ‘big’ ruled.
When life was more complicated; when the ‘collapse to simplicity’ as foretold by Mr Shirky had yet to take root in our consciousness.
That essay – to me – looks increasingly seminal in its thinking.
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
That the same logic that Shirky appears intent on applying to complex ‘business’ models could apply equally as easily to complex ‘voting’ systems of which the UK variety is a class apart.
The simple solution is to put Messrs Clegg, Brown and Cameron in front of Cowell, Morgan, Cole and Co and for them to press a big red button as we all reach for our mobile phones.
We’ll vote for the lad we like, we trust… the one we think can have a conversation with.
That’s simple. And that’s small.
Big and complicated don’t work. End of.
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