A Conversation with Marc Canter, Part II: "I took the 90's off..."
Originally published February 17, 2003 in Amateur Hour: the “me” in media on Corante. Read Part I →
The Power of Open Standards #
Jonathan: Where are blogs going and what is your company, Broadband Mechanics, doing in the space?
Marc: OK — here we go.
We think of blogging as a form of personal publishing. Media and communications are merging with personal publishing.
Broadband Mechanics is building new kinds of tools and tool environments which will enable average everyday people to create and maintain new kinds of online communities which integrate, aggregate and provide appropriate levels of customization to media, communication and personal publishing. To help make this all happen — we’ll also be promoting the concept of open standards which will help all tool vendors, existing media vendors and end-users get this all to happen.
Jonathan: Many tools targeted at the home user throw in lots of animated gifs and clip art. The challenge is to incorporate photos from the user’s digital camera as easily as clip art. Phil Greenspun’s Travels with Samantha is nothing but text and pictures; ten years later Kevin Kelly’s AsiaGrace, while more attractive and a bit more sophisticated, isn’t substantially different in content or UI. This is especially compelling if you can come up with some built-in content that is difficult to do by other mechanisms.
Marc: I’m sitting here with my VP of Engineering discussing that very feature — built-in content! With the incorporation of the Creative Commons, could you imagine if we could pull off this media management standard? We could have:
- Creative Commons
- Internet Archives
- bands
- artists
- college students
- anybody’s stuff
- museums
All as part of a giant public domain library of stuff.
Jonathan: You’ve been posting a lot of visionary stuff lately — your initial multimedia conversation and followup, the open standards architecture stuff, free media management and more. Obviously some of this is Broadband Mechanics’ playground, but you’re tossing it out there and even talking about creating a non-profit to help organize and move things forward. Why now?
Marc: “Why after all these years wise man, should I go and conquer the heathens?” “Because they are bad and need to get their asses kicked,” said the wise man.
I certainly thought more was gonna happen by now. I’ve been more or less forced to take up the reins of leadership — as quite frankly, I don’t see any others doing it.
It’ll all make sense once we start to ship products. In the meantime, it has to make sense for all constituents — with lots of benefits for all.
Jonathan: How quickly will multimedia conversations reach mass appeal?
Marc: Mass? Five years. Pretty nerdy scene — 2.5 to 3 years. Our products supporting it — nine months.
Jonathan: Why will this succeed where interactive TV fizzled?
Marc: Completely different things. One is an industry with proprietary infrastructure and dedicated boxes — the other is a software solution. There is a big difference!
Software-only has always been my approach — as whenever I go down the “take advantage of a specific piece of hardware” path, I always fall back to: “well you’d still want it to do this, and be available on a generic PC and run on a game machine.” So why change now? Software-only is the way to go.
Also — broadband + home LANs + devices are finally reaching critical mass.
Jonathan: That’s it. I’ve been struggling to clearly articulate how a bunch of underemployed dot-com burnouts are going to reinvent the world in their spare time when billion-dollar ITV pilot projects all failed. So the distribution of client cost and dropping price of PCs is powering a “fail quickly and cheaply” mentality that is very different from the big media “build it and they will come” model of ITV. Is that what it boils down to?
Marc: I actually like that explanation — though I have no intention of failing — but I realize you’re talking about an entire industry.
Jonathan: I’m also evangelizing to some pretty smart people who say “blogs don’t matter” for various reasons. They don’t see that it’s not blogging that matters — that’s just the text-mode first step of the personal CMS hypermedia communicator thingy (which could use a more elegant name).
Marc: “Personal server” might be the right term. But this is typical shortsighted thinking — looking at blogs today. Just say “enterprise” and “knowledge management” to them and everything will be fine.
Jonathan: What surprise players are out there — Apple? Sony’s new customer-centric strategy?
Marc: All non-players. I think those folks have had their day and missed their chance. They’ll be followers from now on.
I believe the dark horse is all of us working together to show how open standards can form an aggregated, integrated set of services. That will kick ass! Then Microsoft will copy us.
The Microsoft Response #
Jonathan: So what will Microsoft do in the interactive conversation space? They have an ISP, a content management server, and Office is going XML and .NET to glue it all together.
Marc: They will try and stay neutral in the content world — wanting to extract money from everyone. But they can’t do that if they own a network or major publishing entity.
I don’t believe Microsoft will ever ship a server for the desktop, unless they bake it into Office. .NET-ing everything and standardizing on XML will just barely keep Microsoft in the game — but that’ll be enough for them to interconnect with the rest of us. But it’s not in their DNA to cooperate — so these built-in behaviors will be in conflict with each other.
Jonathan: Might the Microsoft/XML/.NET platform be the B2B version of hypermedia conversations — complete with centralized control, copyright, intellectual property protection — making Creative Commons and open standards the C2C version for the rest of us?
Marc: Let me simplify.
Microsoft stole the idea of .NET from Dave Winer and the other early web services folks. But Microsoft hasn’t really done much with it. They’ll continue to steal what we do — as we show it to them. Then they’ll bake it in and call it their own.
None of which matters. All we have to make sure is that we can do our own thing, that there are wires to peek and poke with, and standards to move stuff in and out. That’s all — we’ll take care of the rest.
But something tells me they’re gonna try and prevent that, or erect barriers or tollgates. Mark my words.
As far as copyrights, Creative Commons, IP or control is concerned — I’m agnostic — except that I really want to see fair use defined. Give me a model that’s fair and we’ll work with that.
Jonathan: Who will make money on interactive conversations?
Marc: This concept will be applied in many ways, for both consumers and enterprise. It’s up to smart entrepreneurs to figure that out and it’s up to Microsoft to copy them or buy them.
Jonathan: If the desktop turns into a website, as some have suggested, does content management become a standard OS feature? If so it seems that the authoring environment becomes the most important piece of desktop software.
Marc: Yes — but don’t underestimate the complexity of these tools and the simplicity of what end-users need. A completely new way of controlling things is needed for everyone to do this stuff.
Jonathan: By nature, a lot of digital content is very ephemeral. You have a background in music, where the best things have tremendous lifespans. Are we transitioning backwards to a multimedia middle ages where art once again becomes performance-oriented instead of designed around archival versions of perfected performances?
Marc: I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to learn that AOL throws away all their content after a week. Major databases of messages and content are not searchable. But I think that will change.
I know that the expectation of end-users is that everything should be archived and searchable. Those vendors who support that concept will prosper.
Jonathan: I wonder how serious Microsoft is about their MyLifeBits project, which will store and index all email, web pages viewed, documents, media content, etc.? It seems unlikely that GIF, JPEG, MP3 and AVI are digital content endgames, but the automated up-revisioning of existing content types will likely be a big hurdle for anything new.
Marc: These people are so far from that — it’s ridiculous. They might have researchers like Nathan Myrhvold worrying about that — but it’s almost like they have to apply for patents and do futuristic stuff because they need to spend the R&D dollars.
All they’re ever gonna do is let others launch new ideas in the market, wait till that technology matures, and then do their thing to claim it as their own.
Why Blogging Matters #
Jonathan: Is this conversational storytelling “gestalt thing” that is evolving a more fundamentally human way of creating and consuming art?
Marc: Five percent of the populace — probably even less — can create. The others watch, listen, read, consume. I think one of the destinies of digital technology is to enable the other 95% to express their creativity somehow. That’s the gestalt view.
Digital cameras, storytelling, assembling stuff from existing content, annotating, reviews, conversations, linking topics together — these are all forms of creativity. That’s what our tools are all about.
There’s plenty of image, audio and video editing software out there. Now is the time to integrate and aggregate media, communications and personal publishing.
Jonathan: I think one thing I find very exciting is distributed groups of people working on projects together. Most digital art these days is purely individual, requiring a single person to wear all the hats. An easy-to-use distributed content management toolset will enable ad-hoc groups to work on things together. Something like my church’s website will no longer be a time suck for a single person, but a shared space where each contributor can do what he does best.
Marc: That’s why we’re considering calling our product “Community Maker.”
Jonathan: Is that why blogging resonates for some people and just plain feels good?
Marc: Sure — it’s at the core of creativity: expressing your feelings, opinions and showing everyone else what you think is important.
Jonathan: What other computer-created art forms are interesting these days? The mashup/bootleg music scene, for instance?
Marc: I’m over 30 years old. Ever heard of the Grateful Dead? The Phish Live site is cool!
Jonathan: It seems a lot of musicians end up aging gracefully by turning into hypermedia authors. Kraftwerk and Underworld — who also have an interactive company — are a couple of my favorites. Perhaps because live music is one of the most multi of mainstream media?
Marc: Yes — and there’s an inordinate percentage of musicians who are programmers. Whatever is in the club culture one day goes into the mainstream the next.