11 | Groundwork | Four Observations: Memory

December 30th, 2011 by bruno boutot
We hear a lot about Moore’s Law and the doubling of processing capacity, but storage-density’s growth makes the pace of processor improvements look glacial.
Cory Doctorow
Tracking the astounding pace of digital storage #

New-Slide23 #

figure 23: Memory of exchanges in a traditional media #

  • The three rectangles are, from top to bottom: the advertiser (the orange rectangle), the media (the black rectangle), the user (the light blue rectangle)
  • The large circles stand for the exchanges between the media and the users, as shown in our analysis (figure 7): specifically, content exchanges (the big black circle), business exchanges (the big red circle).
  • The two kinds of small blue circles (solid and dotted lines) represent the memory, if any exists, of these exchanges.
The users know and remember: #

  • What content they have used (the solid blue circle overlapping the big black circle)
  • What they have paid for (purchases, subscriptions, classifieds) and what ads have interested them (the solid blue circle overlapping the big red circle).
The media knows what the users have done only through statistics (hence the dotted lines). #

New-Slide24 #

figure 24: Memory of exchanges with users in a Web media #

  • By media professionals
  • By other users
  • By our advertisers and merchants
Hosting these memories has two main effects: #

  • Hosting the user’s memories = the media as a “home” for the user
  • Hosting recorded relationships = generating trust

What does memory change?
#

Memory changes the space we have for content
#

  • We were constrained by the format (paper area for print, linear time for electronic media)

Memory changes the space we sell #

  • Advertising prices are based on the scarcity of premium space, just as real estate is
  • When space is expandable at will, its value tumbles: buying free space doesn’t make sense

Memory changes the value system
#

  • In near infinite space, real estate has less value; data and connections have more value; so relationships (data + connections) have more value

As it happens, Memory changes the space we have for hosting memories (data, connections, relationships) #

  • Expandable memory allows us to transform all our exchanges with advertisers, merchant, and readers into relationships.

And obviously, Memory changes the space we are in, because, on the Web . . . #

New-Slide25 #

figure 25: . . .  Memory is the medium:
Users and merchants are everywhere on our platform
How do we do business with all of them? #

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