The bandwidth-sync correlation that's worth thinking about | Hacker News Reader

The bandwidth-sync correlation that's worth thinking about

sethgodin.typepad.com

6 pointspeter1238 comments

He's plotted a scatterplot, using totally made-up data, that has points all over the place -- no particular correlation discernible to me, anyway -- then drawn a diagonally-oriented green ellipse over it, and said "behold the correlation".

After writing that, I briefly thought that perhaps he had some fraction of a worthwhile point after all because the top-right-corner might be inaccessible -- as he says, "not everyone can pay", etc. -- but wait, "Cisco Telepresence" (top-right corner) is just one instance of teleconferencing and lots of companies have that already, and "live seminar" (top-right corner) is what happens every day in every school and university in the world, and "movies" (not top-right corner) cost far more to make than either. Oh, and "one-on-one coaching"? How about "one-on-one conversation"? Still by a large margin the single most widespread form of communication in the world, I'd guess. (Maybe not in countries where most of the population spends all their free time watching TV.)

There might be a tiny kernel of truth buried beneath the bullshit: you can only get "high-bandwidth, highly synchronized" communication via a channel that's high-bandwidth in both directions, and that means either physical proximity or (what's currently) expensive networking. Wow, what an insight.

(Oh, and: "If you had seen this chart three years ago, you obviously would have invented Twitter". Because everyone, when they see a chart of ways of doing something, immediately asks themselves "How can I add one more thing to an already densely-populated part of this chart?".)

I don't understand how twitter is more synchronized then a phone call or even IM, as twitter is not real time whereas a phone call is and IM can be.

I also don't understand why cable news has less value than just regular tv?

Because it's basically a scatterplot he just made up. He's a marketer and not a researcher.

To use his own words you could say that his articles have very low bandwidth.

I also don't get how a phone call is less bandwidth than a blog post.

This is a silly made-up graph that Seth should probably kept where it belonged: on the back of a napkin, in the restaurant's bin.

I suppose the problem is that he's viewing media and communication tools as strictly utilitarian. It's the first time I see "One on One Coaching" bundled as media like movies, books, and television. That seems odd, but of course he's coming from the point of view of a marketer looking for the benefits and usefulness of things. I mean, he put a PDF in higher "quality", or "higher bandwidth", than Art.

Looking at that graph, isn't the logical next big thing white noise pumped into your ear from the future?

I would guess it's more like "pump white noise to an infinite number of people's ears at the press of a button."

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