The Hindu Business Line : Old wine in accessible bottles

The Internet has made mountains of media content widely available, but what we have is more content rather than new content, bemoans Richard van der Wurff in one of the essays included in The Internet and the Mass Media ( www.sagepublications.com) edited by Lucy Küng, Robert G. Picard and Ruth Towse. The Internet has so far had remarkably little impact on the types and formats of content that is presente d to audiences; and the current situation, the author describes, as ‘old wine in smaller and more accessible bottles.’

Online newspapers, for example, may provide individual articles instead of news pages, but these articles tend to be identical to the ones published in the print paper, the author observes. “New content, specifically made for the Internet — such as real-time stories that are updated during the day — is scarce, and new content formats — such as interactive reporting — are even scarcer.”

The reason, according to him, is that media organisations use the Internet as a cost-effective, additional promotion and distribution channel, to serve existing and some new audiences. He argues that producing new content for the Net doesn’t seem attractive because of the difficulty media organisations face in recovering the high costs, especially in view of the proliferation of non-media organisations and individuals who would use the Net to distribute content free to their audiences.

Consequently, new and Internet-specific types of content are primarily found in three areas, says Wurff: “Content niches where audiences are willing to make substantial payments (such as retail financial and investment services, professional and scholarly information or porn); areas where ‘amateur’ content providers are very active and do not put a price on all costs (for example, weblogs and social networking sites); and on websites of organisations where the profit motive is not dominant or even absent (for example, websites of European public broadcasters).”

Important read.

Verbal jujitsu

In jujitsu, you take a force coming at you and redirect it to change the situation. Similarly, by using verbal jujitsu, you can react to undesirable, demeaning statements or actions by turning them into opportunities for change that others will notice, suggests an ‘ideas with impact’ publication from Harvard Business Review on The Persuasive Leader ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

For instance, managers can use verbal jujitsu to prevent talented employees, and their valuable contributions, from becoming inadvertently marginalised, say the authors. As example, they narrate the story of Brad Williams, a sales manager at a high-technology company. “During a meeting one day, Brad noticed that Sue, the new marketing director, had tried to interject a few comments, but everything she said was routinely ignored. Brad waited for the right moment to correct the situation.”

This is how he succeeded in the correction: “Later on in the meeting, Sue’s colleague George raised similar concerns about distributing the new business’s products outside the country. The intelligent remark stopped all conversation. During the pause, Brad jumped in: ‘That’s an important idea,’ he said. ‘I’m glad George picked up on Sue’s concerns. Sue, did George correctly capture what you were thinking?’”

With this simple move, Brad accomplished a number of things, the authors explain. “First, by indirectly showing how Sue had been silenced and her idea co-opted, he voiced an unspoken fact. Second, by raising Sue’s visibility, he changed the power dynamics in the room. Third, his action taught his colleagues a lesson about the way they listened – and didn’t.” To Sue, the intervention was important: “She was no longer passed over in staff meetings.”

Great takeaways.

Quantum entanglement

A chapter titled ‘The EPR paradox,’ in 50 Physics Ideas you really need to know by Joanne Baker ( www.landmarkonthenet.com) begins by stating that quantum mechanics suggests information can be transmitted simultaneously between systems, no matter how far apart they are. “Such entanglement implies vast webs of interconnectivity between particles across the universe.” Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen thought this absurd and encapsulated their discomfort in the form of a paradox named after them (EPR).

Quantum entanglement (as the weird action at a distance was named) now allows the encoding and transmittal of information in ways that are unlike anything possible before, the author traces. “In normal computers, information is encoded as bits with fixed values in binary code. In quantum computing, two or more quantum states are used, but the system can also exist in a blend of these states.” Qubit, a term coined in the early 1990s, stands for quantum bit.

Entangled states provide novel communication links between the qubits, writes Baker. For instance, quantum cryptography is based on the use of quantum entanglement as a linked encryption key. “The sender and receiver must each hold the components of an entangled system. A message can be scrambled at random, and the unique code to unravel it sent via quantum entanglement connections to the receiver.”

Such encryption, explains Baker, has the advantage that if the message is intercepted, any measurement ruins the message (changing its quantum state), so it can be used once only and only read by someone who knows exactly what quantum measurements should be performed to reveal it via the key.

Recommended addition to the science enthusiasts’ shelf.

Eight, the number of computing

Some early computers used teleprinters for input and output, and so used 5-bit sequences for alphanumerical symbols; they were effectively using base 32, recounts Andrew Hodges in One to Nine ( www.shortbooks.co.uk). “Bases of 8 and 16 became more popular, and base 16 became standard for microprocessors.”

But the number eight has made a comeback, not as the octal representation but through the fact that 256 is 2 to the power 8, he continues. “This means that a sequence of eight binary digits is effectively a numeral in base 256. By the 1970s it was standard to work in such 8-bit units, called bytes.”

Eight is the number of computing, declares Hodges. “It was prefigured by Archimedes’ organisation by myriad-myriads, and also by the 8x8 chessboard for well-calculated strategy.” The hugeness of possibilities within a computer is even greater than the number of possible bridge hands, he describes.

“Just one 64-bit register, a microscopic component of a computer, can hold any one of the 2 to the power 64 different numbers. At a thousand trillion operations a second (the fastest in 2006) it would take five hours to work through them all. There are 2 to the power 128 possible states of two such registers, and even using ten billion chips in parallel, it would take a million years to work through them. Therefore most simple additions of two 64-bit registers have never been performed…”

Ideal company for an enthralling evening.

Tailpiece

“A popular feature in the e-counselling we have for our employees is…”

“The consultation?”

“No, the animated couch with an optional e-weep facility!”

dmurali@thehindu.co.in