By James Decker
Integrity isn't the most likely idea to come away with after taking
the grand tour of the new broadband networks. But that's the idea
I'm stuck on. Which kind of integrity do I mean? Structural, personal,
design integrity? Let's see, structural integrity might include questions
like: "Will the banner ad crash, stranding me in the middle of
Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World episode? Well, that might afford
some ironic subtext. I can handle that. Or, could the Real Audio,
Quicktime, Windows Media Player war happen in some way other than
by tugging at my trouser legs? I mean, choices I have no meaningful
basis to decide aren't really choices. I don't think it is structural
integrity I'm stuck on. Maybe it's Design integrity I'm thinking about.
After all that's what pulled me into www.sputnik7.com just twenty-four
hours after my home DSL connection went live. I chose to give sputnik7
a closer look for this review, but three months ago I found sputnik7
while brushing up on bands at www.BrainWashed.com. That's where I
saw a feature on Jack Danger's new album. Jack is also known as Meat
Beat Manifesto and his new album was going to be a pure play release,
a sputnik7 exclusive. I clicked. I remember thinking about the URLs
trace reference to communist technology and then my screen started
to bleed a revolutionary red, crisscrossed with shifty little scan
lines. So, I'm ready for the subversive, radical, pirate radio, out-from-under-the-boot-heel,
post-capitalism experience. Instead, the metaphor gets mixed, suddenly
I'm watching a survival-of-the-fittest sperm count pun. Still, it
was some of the slickest Flash I'd seen over the net (in my first
24 hours). I wanted for sputnik7 to be a rich site. I really did.
I went straight to Jack Danger, wheezed at the price tag and groaned
at the poor video and audio quality of the limited sample. Still,
the most expensive music is sometimes the very best. My brain told
me, "You're shopping now." And I knew it was true, but I
decided to take a look around just to see who Jack Danger consorts
with on the Web. I had to shift gears to see that yes, the features
were interesting but the design had crashed, I was stranded wondering,
"What's the connection? What's the story here?"
Cookie cutter reviews and the feeling of being tricked when menus
that promise content instead deliver clips and trailers, that's the
connection. Sales and content were one and the same. That's what held
the site together, that was its integrity. So, if you're almost famous
when sputnik7 invites you to submit your band's demo for possible
reposting in the "Free Downloads" section… (which really
just links to your band's own site), the circle will be complete.
Seller will have met seller. For the infamous, we are invited to select
our favorite video and wait for it to play shoutcast style to other
"viewers". Yes, the feeling of sputnik7 is unmistakably
that of a centrally managed store. My mistake was expecting that a
site that with exclusive ties to Jack Danger held some particular
interest in the music; it promised some narrative of music sensibility,
a history maybe… I was picturing a person behind sputnik7. Maybe,
when I said integrity I really meant voice, I sought contact with
a person's ideas. It made me think how, for better or worse, television
came into its own by creating more than a learnable visual rhetoric,
it relied on a cast of characters, the voices and personae of people.
The Web doesn't need to emulate the evolution of television, in fact
it had better not because we already have television and television
will soon offer its own interactivity. ITV will try to corner and
contain the current consumer market with it's buy/sell logic intact.
We can look forward to corporations, politicians, and civilians all
advertising to each other. Self help will likely flourish as we even
learn to advertise to ourselves.
So what might be the logical difference, the idea that is integral
to Web content that sustains content by getting people paid? With
the ability to simulate three dimensional spaces, semi-intelligent
agents, synchronous and asynchronous discussion, the model may draw
more from storefronts spaces. Don't think mall, please, think of our
grandparents' generation. Back rooms perhaps where special deals can
be made, except these back rooms secret virtual waterfalls, try a
free taste of this, or you should meet my friend. Would these be real
or simulated conversations? Software agents or real time conversations
with knowledgeable people? Both. But, a shop that empowers its employees
to make deals, work on commission, keep the client in the seat, might
just energize transactions and create a kind of culture. Culture being
that thing that brands came to simulate, you remember. In short, the
content at sputnik7 doesn't fit together. Broadband is awfully new,
but I'm hoping the convergence of video, audio, text, animation, and
synchronous communication will amount to a convergence of learning
and play, socializing and politics, sensibility and sales. Kind of
like it's always been.