Here is a headline that makes me wince. As some of you know, I tend to worship at the industry shrines of Google and Apple, but even I can’t take seriously a statement suggesting that Google has the advantage of… get this, maturity… over, are you ready?… China. That’s right. Nothing less than one of the world’s oldest civilizations. And from its position of worldly wisdom, Google shall tell the youngsters to “grow up.” Even I have limits, and maybe Google does too. (Although it’s too early to tell.) In fairness to the author, the substance of the article was not about China proper, but rather the Chinese government. Still, while this entity has been accused of much, I don’t think “immaturity” is a complaint that will hold in any court, especially not on account of failing to appreciate the charms of Google search. So it goes in digital media journalism.
And again, here is another recent headline that made me double-take, (for different reasons), and there were countless headlines of similar substance around the same time yesterday. The author here expresses puzzlement and near shock about the fact that the Nexus phone only sold 20,000 units in its initial week of marketing. Of course, after all the hype and enthusiasm within the world of gadgetry enthusiasts, 20,000 units would seem unfathomable. But in a much bigger world, the economy is soft and the average person would not spend almost $600 on a phone – let alone one that does more or less what the iPhone does – or sign on to an unpopular carrier, T-Mobile, in exchange for a partial subsidy. When Apple introduced the iPhone, in contrast, into a strong economy, subsidized by big AT&T (before people realized that the network quality does matter), and with no comparable product in the market, this was a different scenario entirely, which was predicated on much more than the sharpness of the touch screen.
I pick on these incidents of the recent press because I believe these are symptomatic of an insularity that has developed, in which the speaker and audience are part of the same small community. There is a certain reinforcement that occurs and a tendency to believe the “reality” of a narrow perspective. We’ve seen this occur in the media sector throughout the past decades, because media is really a public relations industry and covering its own story is an easy subject. (Throw a little finance in the mix, and this is how bubbles grow and burst.)
We have to remind ourselves, however, because we are prone to forget, that media functions within a world of which it is only a particle. As fabulous as a particular feature on the latest trinket may seem to those who live and breathe trinkets and features, and as much as this fabulousness may be at top of mind within a limited circle of professionals and other enthusiasts, in the end, it may not matter. The Chinese government doesn’t care about Google, and the U.S. consumer does not care about mobile Gmail functionality at any price. I expect that Steve Jobs is more mindful of such realities than he is sometimes credited, and I would be genuinely surprised if the January 27 announcement is for a $1,000 tiny laptop that is too big to hold on the palm of your hand to type, as current media speculation has it.
