Thank you for the two bucks Nielsen, but doesn't tempt me into watching the TV wasteland

In the mail today was an envelope reading "We've produced the TV Ratings for over 50 years!" Good for them. Really. I'm sure that's important to someone. Their market research though was wasted because they might have been able to discover that I do not own a television, do not take part in that cultural wasteland, and have no interest in getting involved. But here it was, an opportunity to become a Nielsen Family, if I so wanted. To become one of the few who are influencing the garbage that infests the television spectrum. It was possibly a chance to become an influencer over television and who knows what might have resulted if they had my opinion thrown into the mix. But somehow I doubt they'll be enrolling in the program after I truthfully told them I own zero televisions or DVR's.

It has me curious though about the long term trending showing a drop or decline in TV viewership. For instance are movements like the TV Turn-Off week (What's the point of TV Turnoff Week?) actually having any effect? Are any significant number of my bretheren humans also eschewing television? Or are most of my fellow humans still wasting their lives being fed with memes by which the corporate masters want us to live our lives?

What came up immediately in searching was of course a Nielsen report, the Three Screen Report to be exact. The report comes from their "Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement" initiative, and clearly intends to be a measure of where "the market" is watching video media content. The three screens are actually five screens, "TV in the home", "timeshifted TV", "Internet", "Video on the Internet" and "Video on a mobile phone".

Hurm, I wonder how they'd count the latest generation iPod Touch I just got? (It's not a phone)

The chart is from 3rd quarter 2009, and does not show a decline in viewership. It shows tremendous growth in watching via unconventional means like DVR's or over the Internet, but still strong growth in people watching this garbage.

Reading the report I'm struck at how it characterizes the audience they're measuring. What they're looking for is how to gauge the amount of time our fellow humans are spending time watching video material. If they were neutral observers not out to influence viewing habits it would be one thing, but of course this company is selling data to organizations who wish to maximize the impact of where they spend advertising dollars and in turn sell the most widgets.

They are characterizing (and ranking) the audience (that is, us) by viewing time. This report is used to look for increase or decline in viewership. A hidden agenda in the report would be ensuring viewing time does not decline. A serious decline in viewership would threaten the Nielsen's existence as well as the companies to whom they sell market data.

Good thing for them the report shows strong growth in viewership and especially technological widgets like DVR's or the Internet are growing as popular ways of watching video media. My contention of course is that this is a vast wasteland and to be sad for my fellow humans who have been snookered into watching this stuff.

I wonder what would happen if there were a serious decline in viewership? Obviously these companies would take a viewership decline as a threat and make some effort to counter such a trend.

An example might be Twitter Quitters Post Roadblock to Long-Term Growth, a study of traffic trends on Twitter. It finds there is a large number of twitter users who don't return after the first month. In other words, twitter has a retention problem. "People are signing up in droves, and Twitter’s unique audience is up over 100 percent in March. But despite the hockey-stick growth chart, Twitter faces an uphill battle in making sure these flocks of new users are enticed to return to the nest."

Replace "Twitter" with "Television" in that report and would there not be a lot of worried articles in the news saying "Nielsen ratings show the death of television, woe is us, what can we do?" Right?

One can dream...

Their site is full of other marketing insights so here's a random collection revealed by trawling around.

Number of U.S. TV Households Climbs by One Million for 2010-11 TV Season This report shows the rising number of sheeple being led to gorge themselves on televised junk.

Can Neuromarketing Research Increase Sales? Describes research into scientists using gizmo's to track brain waves and eye movements while a customer is looking at a widget they intend to sell. By looking at neurological responses they're able to detect which version of a given widget elicits the desired response, presumably with the desired result of more sales.

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper

HOMEWORK: Comment on Bertrand Russell's statement, "The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." Go to Freewillastrology.com and click "Email Rob." Hope he doesn't min me making a blog post out of it ;-)

The universe is surely full of things. Atoms, molecules, planets, galaxies, peoples, atmospheres, rocks, etc. Things are strewn from one end of the universe to the other and no doubt the other universes are full of things too.

Surely as our knowledge increases our human society has been able to shape the things in the universe in new and interesting ways. Also as our knowledge increases we've been having a growing understanding of the complexity of this universe we inhabit.

But .. what could make this "magical"? What could make the things in the universe magical?

For starters the existence of the universe itself is rather wondrous. What caused this universe to exist? A big explosion? What caused the explosion? How did an explosion create the stuff of the universe? There's a lot of unanswered questions there.

It's easy to walk down the street looking at trees and birds and whatnot that the universe is rather simple. It's essentially a bunch of rocks and atmosphere and water whizzing around with no real apparent purpose. Is there any ultimate goal to the existence of the universe? Or is it just meaningless randomosity which created the universe with no long term purpose?

A literalist might think the pile of rocks we live on simply exists because of randomosity. That certain constants had to be right in physics equations for this place to exist, that's a matter of fortuitous luck.

But physicists who study such things are finding all kinds of crazy stuff when they look closely. They're able to create conditions where light particles exist at two places at the same time. They're able to demonstrate instantaneous communication over long distance. They're able to demonstrate precognition in humans. They're able to demonstrate an ability for humans to project energy over distance to improve healing response of others.

Surely as our collective wisdom grows even more we'll find even more wild and crazy stuff in the fundamental makeup of the universe.

Are we "mean" if we're "green"?

A recently published study titled Do Green Products Make Us Better People? somehow has led to some articles suggesting that "green" consumers are meaner than non-green consumers. Hmm? It's clear that some are making "green" lifestyle choices (buying Prius's or shopping at Whole Foods) because of a kind of moral stand. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore repeatedly talked about the morality and ethics issue. It's likely that some people take their green choice as a way of internally telling themselves they are holier than everybody else and have more leniency to commit other sins. One might prefer however that people making a stand for higher morality would make other higher morality choices in their lives. But that may be a naive thought; for example the number of spiritual teachers who commit sexual transgressions (such as pedophilliac priests) indicates that we all have struggles with living to our moral standards and it doesn't matter how morally pure or impure we strive to live.

The study (link below) involves some experiments that are very abstract. Partly this has to do with the practice of Science where they like to isolate variables to minimize the number of external influences. But this leads to wholly artificial contexts that the human subjects are put in. This study for example had the subjects "shopping" in a totally artificial "online store" and drawing conclusions from their behavior in the artificial store. That is they did not study their real behavior in real stores in their real life, but their behavior in an artificial store.

After subjecting their subjects to an artificial store, they then subjected them to artificial social interactions meant to gauge their willingness to share money with others. First there's an assumption that a moral person shares money with others. But is it truly moral to share money with others? Let's say you're walking down the street and see someone with a sign out asking for money, what's the moral stance you take? I look at that person and decide between several choices based on who they appear to be, whether they appear to be capable of earning a living on their own, etc. It's not a simple choice based on simplistic formulation of "sharing money" is more moral than other choices.

While I have lots of qualms about the study the writeup has some interesting things to say.

"In the past few decades, consumers have become increasingly attentive to social and ethical considerations in areas such as energy consumption, animal husbandry, and trade" Great .. yeah .. there are other considerations to our purchases than how much money is spent. It's very important and I've written over and over about this. "This increased concern and feeling of responsibility for society has led to remarkable growth in the global market for environmentally friendly products" Yeah, I do see more products that label themselves as "green". However I'm not always convinced that the products in question actually are any better than other products. "...the assumption that purchasing choices express not only price and quality preferences, but also norms, values, and beliefs..." This is very true for me and to my understanding this is true for everyone. Probably these effects are buried in the subconscious as are so many of the other factors affecting our choices. "People do not make decisions in a vacuum; their decisions are embedded in a history of behaviors." Yeah.. what I just said.

One thing about the study and that "history of behaviors" comment is that they did not appear to connect the choices of the research subjects with their own history of decisions.

"Although mere exposure to green products can have a positive societal effect by inducing prosocial and ethical acts, purchasing green products may license indulgence in self-interested and unethical behaviors." As a main conclusion of the study it's rather interesting. However embedded within the statement and other discussion in the study is this concept of "priming" behaviors through exposure to concepts. They referred to a study where people were shown pictures of fancy restaurants and that affected whether the people then went on to eat with high society manners, or not. Hence a conclusion is that presenting certain images of positive social consequence could lead others to practice positive social behaviors. Or contrariwise shown images with negative social consequence could lead people to practice negative social behaviors.

In other words perhaps people playing violent video games will be influenced to more violent behavior?

But I draw another idea from this. These are psychologists studying the behavior of "consumers". I've heard about how the most brilliant psychological research is done around consumption and buying practices. The idea is that if a company can understand the buying psychology they can worm their way into the subconscious of consumers and cause them to buy more stuff. Hence stores are probably full of subtle psychologically derived cues that induce purchasing behavior.

It's helpful for the corporations to have consumers buy more stuff because that's how corporations live, by having more money flow to their coffers. But is it "green"? If one overconsumes "green" products with impeccable green credentials the truth still is that one has overconsumed. Part of the ecological problem we have is overconsumption. But if the companies cause us to overconsume because they have studied the psychology of green consumption and found the psychological cues to induce green consumption the result will still be non-green overconsumption.

Links: 

Do Green Products Make Us Better People?

Links: 

Greener is (Literally) Meaner According To New Study

Review: Life After People - Depicts the fragility of our modern society

"What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared? This isn't the story of how we might vanish it is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind." The premise for this series is rather cockeyed, just how would it come about for humans to disappear without any other effect? For some reason that's the question the series tries to answer, if people suddenly disappeared what would happen to the stuff left behind? I think that while the literal premise is cockamamie it does serve to demonstrate the real fragility of our society despite the illusion of permanence. It's worth watching these shows and to ponder the fate of mankind.

Each episode is a stunningly graphic examination of how the very landscape of planet Earth would change in our absence. It uses movie-quality graphics simulations to depict the likely fate of dozens of iconic buildings and cityscapes around the world. What would happen to the millions of animals in agricultural captivity? What about the household pets? What about chemicals and whatnot stored in warehouses? When does Mt. Rushmore or Stone Mt wither away?

A key element of the story is the resources currently required to maintain the cities around us. The planets weather and plants and animals all attempt to impose the natural order upon the planet. It is the action of humans that instead imposes human order. Humans have diverted rivers, buried landscapes under concrete, built massive steel or concrete buildings, etc. The thing is all those buildings require constant maintenance, some requiring more than others. For example the Golden Gate Bridge (in San Francisco) is constantly exposed to ocean air, fog, and other weather coming in off the Pacific Ocean. Crews are constantly repainting the bridge in order to keep it from rotting away. Without humans to maintain these structures they crumble away due to weather and other natural effects.

Concrete is a particularly interesting material. It is immensely energy intensive to make concrete. Once it's poured into place it looks rather permanent, but in truth it crumbles away over time. Concrete is unlike the stone used by ancient cultures in the buildings which have lasted millenia, concrete structures are unable to last very long. Hence all the concrete structures from sidewalks to highway bridges to prisons to sports stadia, they all will crumble soon enough, requiring demolition and rebuilding. It's a cost our society is saddled with and I wonder whether our society will find itself unable to pay the bills to rebuild that concrete infrastructure?

Rabies is another example. In the U.S. this disease exists in the wild and to attempt to keep the disease in check biologists work in the field every year distributing vaccinations to the wild animal populations. Without those biologists vaccinating the wild animals the disease would be unchecked.

The Kudzu vines in Georgia are another example of humans being employed to keep nature in check. If humans were not constantly cutting and pruning the Kudzu infestations it would blanked the whole of the southeast U.S.

This is an interesting meme in Life After People - that nature left unchecked by humans is chaos and disaster and destruction. Um. It seems to me that the natural biological life on this planet existed for a billion years or more before humans came along. The natural biological life on this planet does not require humans to tend and care for it, instead the natural biological life on this planet showed it can take care of itself. The chaos and disaster and destruction shown in Life After People is instead destruction of the buildings and artifacts of human life. Those buildings and other artifacts are an unnatural attempt to impose an unnatural order upon the planet. What the show depicts is the process by which the planet will reimpose natural order.

Each episode includes an example of a city which had been inhabited by humans, but was abandoned. Each of these places have undergone decay and destruction because humans were not there to maintain human order. Without humans to maintain human order these cities are crumbling and falling apart.

One example is Hashima Island in Japan. It was a city built on a rocky island in the ocean where the inhabitants operated a coal mine (mining undersea coal). But 30 years ago the city was abandoned and is slowly crumbling away. Another example is Gary Indiana, a city built because of a U.S. Steel plant and which was abandoned when the U.S. Steel corporation died. The city of Gary Indiana is largely abandoned with crumbling buildings galore. Another example is Angkor Wat in Cambodia, abandoned over 600 years ago when the Khmer Empire was defeated by invaders from another land. There the jungle has taken over, with tree roots growing into the temple walls and the primary occupants are the wildlife.

The scenario they depict is more than extremely unlikely. Just how would all humans disappear all at once without a war or massive disease? Short of divine intervention humanity is unlikely to disappear without a fight. It's not worth pondering too closely the precise story they depict but it's very worth while pondering an aspect of this story.

Human history is full of examples of empires who were unable to continue funding the empire. The cost of maintaining these empires became too much, and the empire collapsed. Sometimes the collapse was hastened by wars or famine or some such. There's no reason to think the current capitalistic empire that's slowly engulfing the world will be permanent. There are plenty of indications it's long term health is very precarious. What's fueling this world spanning capitalistic globalized empire is cheap oil, and as cheap oil runs low becoming expensive oil the globalization empire will collapse.

In some cases the buildings and cities attain iconic importance to human culture. Certainly buildings like the Washington Monument or the Capital Building or the "Big Ben" tower in London have huge symbolic importance. But without maintenance they will crumble and collapse as did the once-grand capital of the Khmer empire, Angkor Wat.

A few years ago I visited St. Petersburg Russia. It had been the capital of the Russian Empire. The Tsars of Russia had built their main palaces all through this city. It was apparent that the lustre of that city was mostly left over from years of the Tsars. The years of Communist rule had not been kind to the city, but it appeared that in recent years they had been refurbishing the city through extensive rebuilding investment. Russia would only be able to afford this because of its own recent economic boom.

Links: 

http://www.history.com/content/life_after_people

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_After_People:_The_Series

Links: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_degradation

The Oil Drum | There is plenty of oil but . . .

In many ways, the folks who say we a have lots of oil are correct. All one has to do is include the oil which is extremely expensive and slow to extract. Much of the cheap, easy-to-extract oil has already been removed. Economic theory says if/when prices rise our pocketbooks will dictate finding an alternative. The alternative will relieve price pressure on the oil causing the price of oil to drop. When oil prices rose, we found substitutes, but they were poor substitutes. Biofuels interfered with food supply; wind is a substitute for natural gas and coal in electricity production, but it is not as a transportation fuel, which is one of the things that we specifically expect to be short of.

Article Reference: 

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6041?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ca...

Links: 

http://delicious.com/reikiman/7gen

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

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Making tea is such a simple thing isn't it? Or, is it? Where do the tea leaves come from and what is the environmental impact of growing the tea? Where does the paper for the tea bag come from, what is the environmental impact of that? What about limited water resources? Is the tea shipped across the planet?

Many tea makers attempt to appeal to green consciousness with fair trade practices, or claiming to grow the tea sustainably, etc. All that is laudible, but then they ship the tea thousands of miles and the environmental impact of the globalized shipping probably destroys several times over the gains from the sustainable farming practice.

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

Links: 

Making Tea (on youtube)

Africa's largest wind farm set to emerge from Kenyan desert - washingtonpost.com

Kenya's Chalbi Desert is a bleak, forbidding stretch of coarse sand and ash-gray ridges broken by clusters of tiny huts. It is also one of the windiest places on Earth, experts say, and it soon will be the site of Africa's largest wind farm. Construction on the $760 million project began in Jan 2009, which envisions more than 350 wind turbines towering over desert expanses near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. When completed in 2012, the wind farm is expected to boost the power supply in this nation by almost 30 percent. Kenya is one of the continent's greenest countries, with nearly three-quarters of its power coming from hydroelectric and geothermal sources.

Article Reference: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112004313....

Links: 

http://delicious.com/reikiman/7gen