Transcripts For CSPAN2 After Words 20161224 : vimarsana.com

Today and it has been wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate earning become heath. [applause]. The first targeted advertisements which are just designed to make women into consumers and have them buy. So whether or not, you know, how that plays with suffrage is hard to say. A lot of the women who were advertisers were former sufficient rah jets. Lady persuaders, they called themselves. And in particular, you know, some of the departments, there were some advertising departments that were just staffed with women only, mainly former suffragists, and they emphasized the themes of individual selfactualization through purchasing decision. So, for example, you know, this cleaning solution will liberate you from, it will liberate you from drudgery. [laughter] you know, the idea that all these im trying to remember some of the other copy. Host you give an example, a soap, a soap that will make you desirable to your husband. Guest yeah, well, that was a bit less female. No, im talking about some of the advertisements where like, oh, you know, freedom from the enslavement of having to cook for your husband every day. Heres this instant food, you know . [laughter] you see what i mean . So these are the womens liberationstyle advertising. Theres also a lot of advertising directed at women which you wouldnt exactly call feminist in its style, a lot of shame advertising. I was looking yesterday at the old listerine advertisements which had the headline often a bridesmaid, never a bride. The idea was that bad breath would make no one want to marry you, and you dont know it, and you cant figure out why you keep being passed over by men. Ultimately, its because you have halitosis which made you undesirable and so, therefore, the solution was listerine which had been a battlefield disinfectant. You know, the brown stuff . Host right, yeah. Guest so there was this whole movement. And one of the most extreme, and i can talk about it if youre interested, is the cigarette, marketing the cigarette to women as part of womens liberation. Host yeah, thats a really interesting thread that you have there in the book, the idea that women couldnt smoke in public. And so there was a campaign embarked upon to more than double the market for cigarettes. By making it socially acceptable. How did that come about . Guest for women to smoke in public. Private was okay. You know, if women were smoking in a restaurant, for example, shed be asked to put out her cigarette. And so lucky strike in particular had the idea that if they could just get women to smoke whenever they wanted, that they could increase their market share dramatically. And this was the age when, as i said, targeting women was all the rage. First targeted marketing. And so they did various things to try to break the taboo. One of the more well known, famous efforts is they staged a fake protest. Lucky strike staged a it wasnt lucky strike secretly staged a protest during the Easter Parade host it was a real protest, yeah. Guest a real protest, but it was put on by lucky strike. Well, they paid people to protest, where women marched in the parade with cigarettes which they called torches of freedom. And they described when reporters asked, you know, why are you doing this, they said, well, were expressioning our freedom expressing our freedom to smoke outside which we see as a form of liberation. This was a kind of forerunner of astroyou are the the of which astroturf which we talk about. Here in washington you have a fake protest movement for some cause. This was one of the first. Host so television and the internet dramatically raised the stakes in this attention economy. Guest yeah. Host looking at today, looking at even this proposed acquisition of time warner by a, the and, the at t, how does that fit boo your thesis, into the idea that capturing attention and monetizing it, turning it into dollars is a prevailing business of the time . Guest yeah. So, you know, theres at t is, obviously, an incredibly wealthy company. It has more revenue than many other companies combined. But it too has come to think that maybe the real resource here that matters is your hold on human attention. That is, just raw time, raw time and raw hours spent with certain content. So thats what theyve seen as the only route forward for them to make more money. And i think that, you know, the fact they want to pay 85 billion for time warners property gives us the sense of just how important this is. I think it is odd just how far this model has gone. In a historic perspective. We started this session talking about the penny press, tiny, tiny sector of the economy. Nobody really cared about it necessarily. So, and then you have a spread where it spreads from this Business Model, the attention merchant Business Model spreads, you know, first to radio, then to television, and now were watching, you know, every night. And then in the last 15 years comes dramatically to the internet. And so now its sort of every activity not every, but so many of our activities, you know, going to see what your friends are up to on facebook, even emailing google maps, you know, all these things we do from daytoday are supported by an ad model. Its really kind of weird. Youve got to be kidding, even 40 years ago, this is really going on . So the reason i wrote this book is how much can this really support, can we drive everything in the economy on this advertising model . But theres no question in my mind particularly when Everything Else in our world, in our economy becomes more abundant. We have enough food, we have shelter, you know, we have clothing. So the old things arent scarce anymore. The one thing that is scarce is time and attention. The one thing no one has enough of and the one thing you cant expand is time and anticipation. And so i think the kind of contest to control the 168 hours we each have 168 hours a week is becoming more and more intense. Host so your previous book, the master switch, is about this idea and forgive me where i get this wrong that previous modes of communication have eventually been dominated by one or two big players and kind of to the detriment, perhaps, of the society as a whole. And the internet could perhaps head down that similar path. Guest right. Host now, interesting that at t, which was one of those dominant companies in a previous era, is now making moves to try to better position itself in the internet age. But i believe you wrote that book before the real rise of facebook. Guest yeah. Host what do you think are the chances that the internet will be dominated as your thesis in master switch warns is a possibility . Guest so when i wrote master or switch, it was a lot of it i wrote about ten years ago. And that at that point the internet was understood by everyone to be so incredibly competitive, there was no chance that one company could remain dominant for any the length of time. People said, oh, yeah, googles here, but theyre going to be gone in a year or two. Theres no way theyre going to hold on. Facebook had just gotten started. Theyre, like, flash in the pan, you know, theres no Holding Power for them. Theyre going to be gone. So my book, you know, i looked at history again and had suggested these patterns, long cycles. And, you know, ill briefly describe it. You have something new invented, theres sort of a wild open period, a wild west era while everyones trying on different Business Model, seeing what workses. Very open speech, a lot of talk, and then consolidation into either an oligopoly or a monopoly like at t of players. You know, like the telephone industry once had a thousand Different Companies in it, now it has four depending how youre counting, right . And for a long time, it was just one. So that cycle which everyone thought the internet was immune to has clearly, i think, come to the internet. When you look at it now, it is a handful of Big Companies; google, facebook, apple when theyre being entered as a Company Microsoft and then amazon, and then the list starts to sort of trail off. And we were talking about the companies that depend on the time and attention. It really is google and facebook are the big players. So that consolidation, which everyone thought would never happen, has happened. And, you know, it obviously has implications for our future. And host is that necessarily bad . Guest i dont think its necessarily bad, i just think we need to be aware of it and not pretend. One thing we shouldnt pretend is like, oh, you know, this will all be solved by competition, we dont have to worry, the internet is so competitive. Someone new will come along. At t lasted in monopoly form for 70 years. I think, what i believe from master switch with, the previous book, is that monopolies themselves or powerful companies themselves go through a life, series of life stages. They often right when they achieve their monopoly or their power are in kind of a golden era. They have idealistic founders, they have very good products. Mainly, they got there for a reason usually. Google became what it is not because it had good advertising. It didnt even have advertising initially. 9 got there it got there because it had a great project. Facebook, its a little harder to explain exactly how they got there, but people liked it. And it was a hit on college [laughter] host i wanted to ask you about this because your book, it sounds a very cynical note on facebook. Guest right. Host putting out the idea that theyre really not giving the world anything but its own relationship sort of reprocessed and re guest yeah. Its a little bit of a mystery to me. Because i get the you know, the basic quid pro quo weve always had looks like this you know, you watch i love lucy, you watch the ads, you get you know, you trade something for something. You get the ads, but you have to watch finish you have to watch the ads, but you get good content. I like football, and i sit through it, oh, god, how many ads can they put in the Fourth Quarter . But i understand because theyve got to pay salaries. There you go. Facebook, what are you getting exactly . You know, youre getting stuff you like, pictures of your friends kids. But, you know, those are your friends, theyre not facebook, so its this kind of weird thing where they sort of resell your own life back to yourself host is it any different than the telephone . Guest well, the telephone, before there was a telephone, you couldnt talk to someone 100 miles away. So theres that host well, before there was facebook, you couldnt immediately share pictures with people from high school. Guest there was this thing called email, i guess. So, you know, there was okay, i admit, they organized people a little bit. Host yeah, how are you going to find them, you know . Guest all right. How to you find them. [laughter] it doesnt fully compute to me, like, the service. Like the telephone, maybe this is just and i dont, i mean, i like seeing my friends kids, i just sometimes think the deal is a little weird with. I mean, we also gave up all of our personal information. It was like i remember when i signed up for facebook, oh, yeah, who are your favorite bands . Okay, ill tell you. I think we were kind of more naive back then and thought, oh, ill tell them more, and everything will be better, and i didnt quite have the idea that i was just sort of pulling out a giant Marketing Survey at the time. Look, i was naive as everyone else. But, you know, to get back to the master switch a little bit, i think weve had a big consolidation. As ive said, you go through life cycles. The real danger, i think, is if the companies are powerful enough that they can shut off their competitors and, therefore, stagnate the economy. So, you know, that sounds absurd for google or facebook, but, you know, at t was this incredibly dynamic Young Company in the 20s, and by the 50s, it had shut down all its competitor, shut down innovation. So if you let this is master switch territory, not attention merchant. But if you let a giant company have too much control over a part of the economy, it tends to be bad for this country overall, and im a very strong believer in stopping that. Host and that, to me, was sort of the unifying idea, is that if you let Big Companies have too much control, too much influence without the people being aware of exactly what theyre doing and why it could be bad for society, that to me correct me if im wrong here is a thread thats running through both these books guest yeah. Host because it seems like increasingly where you go in the attention merchants is this idea that the googles, the facebooks of the world are capturing our attention in subtle ways at first but then pervasive ways that were not necessarily thinking about. Guest ing right. Host were not conscious of the bargain. Guest yeah. I am concerned, frankly, about a future where we live in a state of almost being constantly manipulated in subtle ways. It reminds me a little bit of, like, the casino again. I dont know if youve ever spent time in a casino, and it can be fun to gamble and stuff. But there are all these subtle earths to sort of make you lose control of yourself and stay there for hours and just do one bet. I dont know if i id like to be able i dont like my everyday life to be like that, you know . I dont think our homes should be set up like that where were just kind of in subtle ways always being a little bit manipulated. Now, its impossible not to be sort of. I mean, if you read a newspaper, youre a little bit manipulated. But im concerned these Business Models when we look guard to the future toward the future, is it the fact that were going to create an environment where these devices and everything around us are kind of trying to move us in certain directions, maybe commercial, maybe sometimes political without us really knowing whats going on . And what does that mean about a country where were meant to be free . Thats what im concerned about. Host okay. So, tim, youve got our attention now. Ideally, what do we do about it . Guest you know, i think it is really important to in some sense do your own attentional accounting. To figure out how you actually spend your time. And some degree, seize control of it and decide very distinctly, like, this is how i want to spend my time. Many people do this already, you know, they decide theyre going to have dinner with their families or something and have that be a time where they or the weekend, you know, you spend your weekend with other people or with friends. I think being aware of how you are spending this incredible, valuable resource is kind of the first step. I also, you know, its going to make me sound old fashions, but i think oldfashioned, but i think we often have to create these lines by ourself. In the older days, maybe religion forced, you know, would make people take a day off of work and have them go to church or do things like that or traditions, and now because of with the lack of because of the lack of power of organized religion and things like that, we have to kind of do this for ourselves and be like im going to decide what is going to be, in some sense, a sacred space or a space thats off limits and whats going to be the rest of my life. Im not saying people shouldnt watch tv or click around on your phone, whatever, that is part of your life. But to have that be all your life, i think, imposes serious risk. The last thing ill say is we need to think about advertising and our revolt against advertising. I believe we are in something of a revolt against advertising. And be a little smart about it. Were in a situation where a lot of people are doing everything they can to get away from ads. I understand it. Ads are annoying. On the other hand, that means advertisers even more desperate to gets a out. And so get at us. So were in this terrible equilibrium where were constantly fighting. And i dont know what the new deal is, but i think we need to somehow, you know, create as a society a better deal with advertisers. But at the same time, number two, also support content if you really believe that you dont want advertising, suck it up and pay for more content. I think people who really, you know host so guest go ahead. Host netflix. Guest netflix is the most successful, kind of an easy example. But, you know, subscribe to newspapers you believe in, you know, all those annoying options, you know, if you like i just, basically, paying for stuff is really important. You know, even sports broadcasting, whatever it is. If you really want it to be more and more adfree, you have to actually patronize the adfree models. Because we have this bad habit of host now, do you, do you intentionally stop short of recommending any kind of legal or regulatory action here . Because, i mean, the problem you present, you present on kind of a global scale, on a pervasive, multibillion dollar corporate conspiracy. Guest right. Host suck the life out of us. You know, acting on an individual basis, spend a little less time on your phone doesnt seem like the scale of solution to such a big problem. Is there a reason why you stopped short of saying, boy, there need to be some either new lines in the sand or redefinition of power in this era where peoples information, peoples data, peoples attention has become such a commodity . Guest its a great question and a challenging question. I think it comes maybe from, from experience with government and really wondering if this problem which is subtle and very moment to moment is something that is easy to regulate in a way that is not dangerous or counterproductive. So thats the challenge in this area. I mean, writing this book ive also watched government be involved in this, watched government be involved in this world, and it is mainly in the form of propaganda. So i think its a very challenging thing especially for, say, a federal government to step in and say were going to regulate how the marketing appeals to these companies work. Now, theres a couple things they can and should do. Truth in advertising, you know, banning fraudulent advertisement which is supposed to be done already, that kind of thing. But to say we dont want you watching more than x hours of television is really hard in a free society. I do support more than, you know, these large scale solutions, local solutions, you know, bans on billboards, bans on flashing signs. But i am not, you know, i was a little different in the message with in this particular case i think the problem of our own consciousness is very challenging to solve through state, federal legislation. Ill just put it that way. Even because its such a micro, momenttomoment kind of thing that i just cant imagine. And when i think about Congress Getting at this. [laughter] it was like how is going to work. Or even wellintentioned agencies. Now, theres certain exceptions like banning ads for kids, for example, certain kinds of ads or trying to limit kids programming makes a lot of sense. But more broadly, especially in a free society, it greats very tricky very quickly. It gets very tricky very quickly. Host now, it was okay though in the earlier era to ban certain kinds of false or misleading advertisements, i mean, im not sure whether you feel it was fine to have limits on advertising for things like cigarettes and alcohol in certain cases guest yeah. Host these are rules that evolved over time. Is there no need for any type of different thinking around the way information is collected . Personal information is collected. Guest ill take that. First of all, youre right that, first of all, there was the you know, at some point in this country we realized you had to ban advertisements that are flat out lies. This is truth in advertising, you know . This pill, you take it, it will make you lose 30 pounds and, actually, it makes you sick. Or there was a big period, this is a little off color, but there was a period where it was very popular to sell the implantation of goat gonads into men to make them more sexually virulent host of course. [laughter] guest yes. Theres a lot of stuff. You want to make money appealing to mens sense of a fadingly by doe, is a very anyway, this is a little bit of an aside. Host i mean, in a way, i see lots of those commercials on tv now. Guest i know you do. Host the little blue pill works. Guest we definitely have not given up to add to that, we havent begin up on magic potions as well. Theres raspberry keytones, youre supposed tooz these things. Every day theres some new, wondrous thing. And i think that stuff, the line should be so where would i, you know, given Carte Blanche think there should be targeted. I, i think we, you know, in terms of regulatory areas, i think it is important to think about the ads that are just stealing from you with nothing in return. So i dont know if youve ever been im sure youve been in the back of a new york taxi cab, and all of a sudden they start blaring ads at you. Youre a captive audience. How is this not, in a way, stealing from us . Its your mind, your time. Sometimes in an airline. So i would be very situational, certain environments need to be more peaceful. And i actually, i guess maybe one reason in the book i held back a little bit is i didnt want to try and cram into one chapter at the end, like, heres all the solutions to all the problems and all the regulation, but because then people get distracted. I wanted to say, okay, look, here is our problem. We have a problem. Our attention is being taken from us. Maybe we really need to think about this in a kind of way, as a kind of stealing almost before we get to what would work as solutions. Because i didnt really think i had the master answer. Its very hard to do that in the last chapter of the book, and thats one of the reasons i held back on those ideas. Host oh, i can imagine. And one thing that ive wondered about though when it comes to the collection of information and the tracking of individuals across various guest right. Host services is why isnt it possible for consumers to see thes do year on them doss year on them . Dossier on them. If im retargeting ads on amazon back to me on facebook and is being used by other sites to track me across why dont i have access to a master map and be able to see that and then make the decision, well, do i like this . And if i dont like it, can i shut certain doors and stop Certain Services from following me so easily . Guest right. I mean, actually you can stop them right now. The problem is that most people dont bother to use the features. Theres these kind of do not track features built into most browsers. Any viewer can do this and probably should. Because theres no regulation in this area or very limited regulation that people are resorting to selfhelp,help, and there are browsers like the brave browsers which bans all ads and renegotiates what tracking is allowed. I think, you know, to get on this tracking we should never forget that, you know, this is our country, this is we are citizens sovereign. If we dont like something, we should be able to ban it. And, you know, what who really loves being tracked . Who loves going to a web site and having all your information collected from you, sent over to, you know, mother ship somewhere to be processed . If we dont like it, we should ban it. Im not calling for it right now, but im saying we have the right as is citizens to say, you know, some of these practices are just too intrusive. We know that supposedly theyre supposed to bring us better ads, but we dont think its worth it. They know everything, this is a good example, i think this is in the u. K. This poor fellow had liver cancer and all of a sudden one day started hearing these ads for funeral home because they figured out youre going to die soon, obviously, probably an error. But nobody really loves these tracked ads. And i would never say that, you know, we, the citizens of this country or of a city or of a state, shouldnt have the right to say, you know, we just dont like this, stop it. Host so what do you think the odds are that we are, indeed, in one of those moments . You close the book with the anecdote about apple introducing guest yeah. Host ad blocking in the latest version of the operating system with safari and the uproar that that caused. Or perhaps it was a version ago. Is that the early sign of a revolt . Guest we could be in the beginning stages of a revolt that fundamentally changes the Business Model of media forever. You know, its hard to say right now, but it is possible that, you know, 20 years from now well be like, oh, yeah, remember advertising . I guess it lasted for 120 years but, you know, it died off. People werent interested. Or people had all the information they needed. You know, one thing you have to realize is that a hundred years ago people didnt know what toothpaste was. People have gotten the idea, look, i know what budweiser is, i got it. I know what it tastes like. It could be that advertising becomes something that retreats to very limited kind of products, maybe new movies you need to hear about. But, you know, otherwise starts to fade away. It is possible that it just declines especially for some major media. Now, were obviously not there yet, its very early. But we but at the early stages f something in retrospect seemed so obvious that this Business Model 20th century, you know, like a lot of 20th century things processed foods, tanning salons they seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, you know, we do things differently. Host and i guess that would cause a major realigning in a lot of different businesses, not the least of which would be googles and facebooks. Guest yeah. Host they still have quite a bit of power to influence society. Is that going to be a hindrance, do you think, to that happening . Guest they would be and theres also Television Advertising which is still the main revenue model. Although about half of Television Revenue now comes from nonadvertising, which is interesting. It would be really interesting, something to ponder, to see what would happen if facebook and google switched to paid models. And if people would pay, you know, 12 a year for facebook or something. If people would pay i would probably pay for google, i think a dollar a month or whatever would be and if they wean themselves off that diet, would that ultimately lead to a completely different place for how the economy goes forward. Im not sure. Its hard to get people to part with money, you know, what they think is money. We like, you know, americans, we like kind of parting with money in less obvious ways. [laughter] thats the nature of our culture. Were addicted to free stuff. So the other side of this would say advertising is so natural, part of this idea of selling is so natural that well never be fully rid of it. Host well, i cant think of a better note to end on than that somewhat hopeful note about what could happen in the future. Tim wu, the book is the attention merchants the epic scramble to get inside our heads, a fascinating read and should make many of us, perhaps, at least question the bargain that weve made for me