How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City carries approximately no news for anybody who watches the changing tastes and habits of teenagers. What makes it special is that it was authored by a fifteen-year old intern at Morgan Stanley in London, and then published by the company.
It says teens like big TVs, dislike intrusive advertising, find a fun side to viral marketing, blow off Twitter, ignore all but the free tabloid newspapers, watch anime on YouTube and so on.
All these are momentary arrangements of patterns on the surface of a growing ocean of bits. (For why it grows, see Kevin Kelly.) What’s most productive to contemplate, I think, is how we will learn to thrive in a vast and growing bit-commons whilst (to borrow a favorite preposition of this teen) trying to make money in the midst.
Which brings me to Chris Anderson‘s new book, Free: the Future of a Radical Price. Malcolm Gladwell dissed it in The New Yorker, while Seth Godin said Malcolm is Wrong and Virginia Postrel gives it a mixed review in The New York Times. But I’m holding off for the simple reason that I haven’t finished reading it. If I write something about it afterward, it will likely be along the lines of what I wrote in Linux Journal as a long response to Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat. (Here are Part I and Part II, totaling more than 10,000 words.)
Leave a Reply