One of my regular readers sent me The Misguided Hype Of Transparency and asked me what I thought about the concept of "transparency". The post was an interesting read because it revealed much (a dangerous thing to suggest when discussing "transparency"). This is another example of Joseph coming at things from a different place. I study physics (Joseph, is there anything you don't study? Well, no. I'm pretty lucky that I can turn my attention to whatever catches my interest and lots of things catch my interest) so my concept of transparency comes from that paradigm, not search engine or marketing or advertising.
I read the article knowing that there's no such thing (at present) as a universal transparent. This means that everything is opaque to something. Most people think something is transparent if they can see through it. People being able to see through something basically means certain wavelengths of the electro-magnetic spectrum can pass through a medium relatively unaltered. I've been doing some fascinating reading about negative refractive objects. These are objects which essentially become invisible to certain wavelengths, kind of like The Predator's suit.
As I've said before, NextStage takes concepts from different disciplines and applies them in what (we're told) are unique and rewarding ways. Transparency, for example. A window can be transparent to visible light but not physical objects. Anybody who walks into a very clean glass door knows this.
Let's assume for a moment that a universal transparent does exist in the web marketing, search and advertising world. What would its properties be?For one, information (the heart of the internet) should flow in both directions (human to site, site to human) unimpeded and unaltered. How much information? All of it? When you look out your window and see the world outside you're only seeing the surface. You're not seeing what's underground, what's in other people's houses. You're seeing form, not function, surface, not substance.
Okay, then, not all of it. There's already too much information going around for most people to want more. Besides, marketers, advertisers, et al, usually don't want site visitors to know what's going on underneath what they see on their screen. The technology (this is the "our network is more reliable, faster, broader, optical, whatever, than theirs") they'll share because that's not where the real money is.
Let's say you, the content consumer, could achieve universal transparency. Would you want it to go both ways? Most people think it's fine if they know something about someone else but they don't want their own privacy violated. But one-way mirrors do not a universal-transparent make.
Right now the internet, if a universal transparent, is one made of slow glass. An excellent and poetic description of slow glass can be found in Bob Shaw's Light of Other Days.
"The most important effect, in the eyes of the average individual, was that light took a long time to pass through a sheet of slow glass. A new piece was always jet black because nothing had yet come through, but one could stand the glass beside, say, a woodland lake until the scene emerged, perhaps a year later. If the glass was then removed and installed in a dismal city flat, the flat would -- for that year -- appear to overlook the woodland lake. During the year it wouldn't be merely a very realistic but still picture -- the water would ripple in sunlight, silent animals would come to drink, birds would cross the sky, night would follow day, season would follow season. Until one day, a year later, the beauty held in the subatomic pipelines would be exhausted and the familiar gray cityscape would reappear."
This, I think, is the current state of the art regarding internet transparency as marketing, advertising and search folks think of it. Transparency exists, it's just going to take a long time to see what's coming through the glass and, once you've seen it, there's no guarantee what you're looking at is still there.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
I'll be speaking at the Society for New Communications Research Annual Awards Gala Summit on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston. Come on by and say hello.
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