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.
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.
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.