Book Review: The Influencing Machine

I read Brooke Gladstone's graphic non-fiction work, The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media, while on vacation this week. It's a great, superbly structured and easily digestible work on a number of complex subject matter.

The book is done in a very similar style to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. In fact Gladstone cites it as one of the inspirations for her work.

Where Understanding Comics looks at the medium of comics itself, The Infuence Machine looks at the evolution of media, journalism, and our relationship to them, as well as how we are affected by them. It also wraps up with a quick tour through popular futurist views on the future of media, which serves as a great crash course on the opinions being bounced around currently.

The subject matter is complex and yet easily digestible. This isn't because it's presented in comic form (though that helps - some of the metaphors used really help push a point across), but rather because Brookstone is superbly skilled in structuring her arguments and her examination.

It's a great read. Highly recommended.

The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media

Ideo on the future of the book

Futurist concept demo on ebook ideas. Touches on some of the ideas I discussed a while back.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Book Review: Media Meltdown

When I was a kid, I don't know exactly what age, maybe 10, my dad had a conversation with me about interpreting the news. I don't remember exactly what precipitated it, I think it was a newspaper headline that he didn't agree with. He asked me to think about who might have written the story and why, what they were trying to get me to beleive, and whether there might be another point of view. I don't remember the subject of the piece, but the conversation itself was pivotal for me, and I always questioned media messages after that.

In recent years, I've wondered at what age I should be having that same conversation with my own kids. The twins are 6 now and they are certainly exposed to a lot. I've heard Tom telling his sister that "batteries are not included" with a toy, or that she might not be able to buy something because "supplies are limited" (shudder).

I don't think it's something that you specifically sit them down for a talk ("Now kids, let me grab my pipe and slippers and talk you about the birds and the bees") but rather plant seeds of questions for them to ask themselves as they consume media, play with toys and games, etc.

Given that I've been asking myself these questions in recent months, my ears perked up when I caught wind of the following book:

Media Meltdown is a comic book adventure about some small-town kids that witness a crime and attempt to bring the perpetrators to justice. Along the way, they learn about media, advertising, and how it is changing with the advent of the Internet. It's a short, fun comic that I'd highly recommending adding to any 8-15 year old's diet.

I'm going to see if the twins like it. I fear it may be a little too complicated for them just now. I'll post an update on how its received.

You can re-touch, but you can't hide

BoingBoing linked to an awesome two part article (1 - Body by Victoria, 2 - The Secret Is Out) in which a security expert uses digital forensics techniques to reverse engineer what retouching has been done to a photo of a model in a Victoria's Secret catalog. The photo first showed up on the fabulous Photoshop Disasters.

As with anything showing up on the Disasters site, there are some glaring errors, but what makes the above articles great is how the author uses the errors introduced here, along with a bunch of different filters and analysis techniques, to begin tugging at the threads of what the image has been through. When the unraveling is done, he determines that the model's skin has been lightened, teeth and eyes brightened, breasts enlarged, nipple removed, and that the dress featured isn't even the color of that in the original photograph, just to name a few things.

It's an entertaining read, and one that spurred a few thoughts:

First, what in this case was an expert applying a couple principles and a set of photoshop tools, I could easily see being a single, end-user-ready, image analysis tool. "Upload your image here and we'll highlight everything that we beleive has likely been modded".

Secondly, if people start to tear this stuff apart everywhere it appears (witness the BoingBoing Demi Moore kerfuffle), I can't imagine that the industry is going to be able to stay ahead of people's ability to uncover its secrets. It's one thing to find talented photoshop artists. Its another to say "...and are you skilled at making sure your image has consistent JPEG compression artifacting and no discontinuities in alternative color spaces" during interviews. Maybe this kind of 'out'-ing will lead toward a downfall of the fake model/body image in media?

Finally, for all industries, this is a great example of how in the Internet age, there are no secrets, especially if you are a large and prominent company.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the only way your secret is safe is if no one cares about it.

On 300 and convergence...

Clint has a great post about the movie 300, and what it exemplifies (and doesn't) in terms of the 'convergence' between film and game media. Great read.

Joost the facts, ma'am

Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.

I just got on the Joost beta and holy cow. It's WAY slick.

This weekend it's moving ot the living room to try and co-exist with Media Center. We'll see how that goes.

Pontificating Pontiff Pariahs Play!

C'mon Pope, don't pick on my choice of entertainment and I won't come to your work and knock your pointy hat off!