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The significance of YourHub.com

Contributed by: Francis Miller on 7/12/2006

From my observation point, half-way up Longs Peak, I can look back over 8 months and 300 postings to YourHub.com . I can also look forward to what I think is the future of this new media. I believe YourHub.com is the canary-in-the-coal mine for books, newspapers, publishing and advertising. Here's why.

In the past Stephen King has commented that there are two kinds of people: a) people who are 'constant-readers' and b) people who are 'constant-writers'. In my mind a third type has emerged, and that is someone who prefers YourHub.com to traditional media.

Consider for a moment that we humans have been on the planet Earth for about 6 million years, but only in the last 500 years has the printing press produced written materials for our consumption. Before that it was rock art and clay tablets. Even Abe Lincoln did his homework on a wooden shovel using charcoal--a fact. The printing press initiated profound change, replacing thousands of monks as copying machines and propelling Martin Luther to fame, it also brought public schools and libraries. But, the most profound change was the ability to have a democracy based on a literate society. Even the dumbest American is more educated than several billion of the rest of the world's population.

A dark side to the printing press and all other forms of media -- radio, television, mainframe computers -- are programmed and controlled by a centralized elite. This aristocracy purported to act as a gatekeeper, ostensibly to control quality. Your letter to the editor or op-ed commentary piece will not get printed unless some "do-dah" at the Denver Post decides it rises to the level of acceptability in their eyes. And, your book, or song, or poem is not going to be published unless some profit-crazed publisher or editor-gatekeeper blesses it. And, the books at the Library were determined by someone with a formal education in "library science". Even bookstores decide for you what would be stocked and conveniently made available. Overbearing all of this is the Patriot Act which allows government to keep tabs on what you read and a file folder on what you say.

It is my belief that in the mid-1990s we crossed a divide from an "Old World" view of publishing and the media to a "Brave New World" made possible by a triangle of disruptive technologies: the personal computer, the Internet and the low-cost color printer. Without much notice, the balance of power shifted from the establishment-writer to the man-on-the-street reader. I predict the end game of this social change is that the "constant-reader" will soon become a"constant-writer" and producer of most knowledge. The Internet and on-demand printing will become the delivery system.

If it pleases the Court of Public Opinion, I hereby submit "YourHub.com" as evidence to prove my case.

I realize you could argue that YourHub.com is not the quality of the Sunday New York Times, and it rarely contains stories of international significance. There are a lot of cat-and-dog stories and one has to pan sand and gravel to find the gold nuggets. But, this obscures the currents beneath the surface of the water. What is happening is that people who have never had the opportunity to write and see their comments published can do so without kissing an editor's behind or grovelling at the feet of a gatekeeper. It is raw, unvarnished, from the heart, out the gazoo, smoke blown up the skirt kind of stuff. And, it comes so fast that there is hardly time to read a piece before another series of articles come roaring down the pipeline.

It is also like a fast moving stream that never ceases. There is no publication deadline, no backwater. The articles and pictures are like molecules of water, bound together and flowing at a fast rate, never ceasing, never ending. Whether you are a reader or a writer it is like being in a kayak in whitewater. You either go with the flow or become exhausted, flip-over and drown.

The national news media takes four or five stories and beats them to death. You can almost bet that when you turn on the news tonight you are going to hear Greta talking about the latest criminal case, Sheperd belaboring a hurricane, Andrea Mitchell undermining the president and Tom Friedman stating "The world is flat". Typical of the media establishment he seeks to coin the term and create a personal currency.

Now, go to YourHub.com where the variety is immense and changing by the hour. Your hits and reviews are tracked and if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, it probably didn't exist. It is like a 24/7 New England town meeting. And, it is an alternative reality that is more connected to the lives we really live with our kids in school, our workplace, and the everyday places we inhabit. It is real, not abstract or disconnected.

The rub in all of this, of course, is that support for the Internet, like all forms of media is advertising driven. Everything written is bait for the reader in the hopes his attention-deficit disorder will cause him to be drawn to an advertisement. It reminds us that there is no free lunch and sponsoring YourHub.com requires a money source somewhere along the line. Personally, I am not offended by that, because if I want to fund my own Web site and try to attract readers that option is always there. I do wonder, however, about the implications of a media where everyone is a writer and there are very few readers. Advertisers should mull that over.

The manner in which information is presented on YourHub represents the future. By now, if you haven't become tired of reading my writing and reverted to looking at the pictures, it is a miracle. Most of us are good for about 250 words and then we want our right brain to be stimulated with pictures. In the future, only a select group of people are going to wade through 800 pages of Doris Kearns Goodwin's's book on Lincoln, A Band of Rivals. We just won't do it and the authors who resist the new interactive media will cater to a smaller and smaller segment. The future is interactive multi-media, HTML language-based, short and sweet, music and video in the background, and available on-demand.

I like YourHub.com and compliment the Rocky Mountain News for pioneering it as an alternative force in Colorado media along the front range. The staff at YourHub.com, tend to be young and idealistic and they will have to get to my age to realize their stint at YourHub represented the future and that the old forms of media had to yield to make room for a new way. For my personal part, YourHub.com has been a means for me to go from being a "constant reader" to becoming a "constant writer." Worst case, I feel I am emptying my brain of what I have read over the years, like cleaning out the attic. Many thanks to the YourHub.com staff and the Rocky Mountain News organization.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Francis Miller

Parker , CO

Francis Miller has posted 699 stories and 9 comments since joining on 11/17/2005. Francis Miller's average story rating is 4.2.
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