The Pulse
BOOKSTORES
There was a front page story in the “New York Times” on the dearth of bookstores in Manhattan. I’m sick and tired of all the baby boomers lamenting the loss of yesterday. Sure, rents are high, sure Manhattan is quick becoming an artist free world, but that’s because of income inequality, the loss of bookstores is about digital, there’s a phenomenal store known as Amazon just one click away on the web.
And if you hate Amazon, you hate anybody who disrupts the past and makes things easier in the future. Let’s put it this way, we all abhor the fact that Wal-Mart eviscerated downtown, but now we see that Amazon was gonna do it anyway, and isn’t it interesting that Wal-Mart does so poorly in the Internet sphere.
Everybody wants cheap prices all the time. For all the hogwash about bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., no one wants to pay $1000 for a flat screen or the same price for a smartphone, that’s what globalization brings you.
As for bookstores, digital won. The fact that the boomers don’t know it yet does not make it untrue.
Youngsters are not addicted to physical books. But they are addicted to reading, and this is a good thing.
DATA
“The Dollar-And-Cents Case Against Hollywood’s Exclusion of Women”
And the nerds inherit the earth.
While you’re complaining that you have to take math in school, Nate Silver and the rest of the nerds are utilizing data to gain new insights and change entire industries.
Never again will talking heads bloviate about election results. Oh, maybe on Fox, where it’s about drumming idiots into submission with falsehoods, but the younger generation doesn’t watch cable TV news anyway. They’ve become inured to looking at the data.
And this data says that the Hollywood trope that no one wants to see females in movies is untrue.
You can argue with the Alison Bechdel paradigm, but the truth is Hollywood is undergoing a wrenching transition based on fact as opposed to feeling.
This is bad because it turns out people overseas do want to see action movies.
But this is good because the fivethirtyeight story will have an impact.
But it didn’t have an impact in a vacuum. The story appeared in the L.A. “Times” today.
Point being, doing good work is no longer enough, you need a publicity firm to get the word out. Which I’m sure fivethirtyeight had here.
It’s a sad world, but you’ve got to work it. In other words, to quote Pete Townshend, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”…gatekeepers are kings once again, they may be different people, but they’re as powerful as ever.
When there’s cacophony, he with the most reach wins. Which is why we have superstar acts and a ton of wannabe and middling ones bitching that they just can’t get traction, they just can’t get money, the whole world is unfair.
But the truth is you’ve got to be great and you’ve got to have a team behind you.
Sorry.
Meanwhile, data has limited impact on creativity in music. Where it’s not about story and rarely done by teams.
Oh, that’s right, the Top Forty is dominated by teams making the same repetitive crap. Which is why even Top Forty is a backwater. You can tell that to Pitbull, no matter what he says on Howard Stern.
MICHAEL LEWIS
This story’s been told definitively twice before.
Once in “Wired” and once in “Newsweek.”
But neither one had traction.
I wrote about the one in “Newsweek”
you can read it here: The Information Age
And as a result my readers told me about the story in “Wired.”
But neither had any traction.
Because neither had the PR team/expertise of Michael Lewis.
Now the “Newsweek” article was written by Tom Wolfe, our preeminent cultural arbiter, who wrote how flash traders eclipsed the Masters of the Universe. Read it here:
I’ve purchased Michael Lewis’s new book, I have not read it yet (I bought it via Amazon, it was delivered to my Kindle instantly the day it went on sale, the problem here is..?)
I love Lewis. But I love Tom Wolfe even more. Lewis is cerebral. Wolfe is emotional. Wolfe makes flash trading come alive.
But without “60 Minutes,” with the limited impact of “Newsweek,” Wolfe’s article went nowhere.
Illustrating it’s all about promotion.
As for “Wired”‘s article:
Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading
it predated “Newsweek”‘s and was nowhere near as well-written as Wolfe’s, so it got no traction beyond the magazine’s readers.
Furthermore, what we’ve got here is the book business imitating the music business. Yes, this is a Beyonce move. No one knew about the Michael Lewis book, it launched and was on sale immediately and the news was everywhere. Will the impact last?
MARK CUBAN
He was quoted in the “New York Times” re the Michael Lewis book.
Cuban has figured out the modern paradigm better than the musicians.
Establish a persona as a thinker and a doer, willing to color outside the lines, and then be in the media all the time.
Cuban is respected because of his wealth and he walks a line where he is never overpromoting/becoming a buffoon.
Cuban is everything Jay Z and the wannabes wannabe. He’s a rich star.
And he’s staying that way by being in the news constantly. Always weighing in because the media asks. And pontificating on his blog. He’s firing on all cylinders.
This is the modern paradigm. Which is why Mark Cuban will probably outlive Michael Lewis’s book.
Maybe not.
FACTS
People hate ’em. Especially those with an agenda.
This week Paul Krugman wrote a story debunking the myth of the skills gap. You can read it here:
Even the President is ignorant here. He was referencing the skills gap in Michigan yesterday.
The point is, everyone is swayed by the wind, and even though there are smart people who’ve devoted their lives to subjects, no one wants to give them any credit, especially if they work for that left wing organ known as the “New York Times.”
Left wing? That’s because the right wing labeled it so! The “New York Times” wrote negatively about the Obamacare website, the “Times” will criticize the left, the right won’t criticize the right.
But let’s not make this about politics, let’s stay with ignorance.
In this data-driven world, the uneducated and those with an agenda believe in being uninformed.
Just imagine if you were uninformed in tech, if you didn’t believe in the data.
Facts rule in tech, which is why tech is ruling us.
