The Battle Between Customization and Simultaneity

I was forwarded an interesting link today to a short streaming segment offering a view on the trajectory of current trends in technology and media.    As a generally early adopter and middle of the road tech geek, I like some of the thoughts here, but it brings up a fundamental problem that I have with some of the underlying theory behind the blogging revolution - perceived by some to be on the road to total takeover of broadcast-style media.    As a blogger, it's clear that I am a fan of some aspects of the technology.   However, I don't believe in the all-out revolution theory because I think the "psychology of simultaneity" (an important and almost always overlooked piece of the equation) outranks the individual benefits of customization, at least when it comes to mainstream entertainment and news.

Personalized media has been something that I've been fascinated by for quite some time.    Most of my friends will remember the company I started in 2001 to look at the opportunity to create non-linear television programming using cable video-on-demand and personal video recorder technology entering the marketplace at that time.    Ultimately, we were a bit early to the opportunity, and decided not to commit production money at the time, but I'm still a strong believer in the power of the concept.    The difference, however, with that implementation and the customized experience projected as part of the future vision offered above, is this idea of simultaneity.   

What do I mean by simultaneity, and why do I think its so important?    
I think that a large part of the reason that shows and movies become social phenomenons is that people really don't want to miss what other people are seeing, and there's a certain unspoken comfort that comes along with watching something that you know a lot of other people are watching.    This still holds true in the age of Tivo.   I still talk about all of my favorite shows with my friends, we just don't talk about them 10 minutes after they aired on television.    We talk about them a week later, when we know that everyone has now had time to watch their recorded episodes.    I believe (and could certainly be wrong) that if you take out this experience of simultaneity (or now semi-simultaneity) you remove a big piece of the enjoyment that this entertainment offers its viewers.

Largely because of my beliefs about the power of simultaneity, I don't think we'll ever see a day, like the one projected in that "Museum of Media History" segment, where everyone gets their own customized news, etc.    Just because technology allows something doesn't mean that the hard social wiring of the human race are going to demand and adopt it.     This point extends down from mainstream media and news, into the blogs themselves, and the long-range potential of blogging.    And on this point, my guess is that the majority of people will end up being a lot like me - there will be some fascination with the idea of creating a historical record of your own thoughts (with little real care for whether or not people read it, other than a desire to create debate), but that mainstream credentialed media will always be the place I turn for trusted news that I know other people are reading as well.

For the record, my friend Jon Neil (who is now a published art critic in May's Modern Painters - nice work Neil!) had a somewhat similar reaction, but from a different viewpoint:

Nicely produced, but not very compelling.  "Googlezon"?  "Friendsterbot"? C'mon folks.  Not too imaginative.  Using the pi symbol in the Epic shadow was, however, very clever.  I thought it was a bit too long to leave the message about media commercialism/vacuousness until the end.  I always get the feeling with these kinds of things that the creators think they're onto something new, which makes the fictional Museum of Media History all the more ironic.  Similar techno-optimism and dystopian projections have accompanied the introduction (and commercialization) of every new communication technology (the stuff people were publishing about the telephone is particularly hysterical).  But, I have to say, I enjoyed it; though I wonder how it would play without the foreboding sentimental tunes.

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