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Revisiting Supply and Demand

Man first produced for survival: necessary tools to build, food to eat, clothing for protection. It is only natural, then, that when products end up traded, purchased or sold we automatically think of the economic model of “supply and demand.” Why would someone sell something that they needed, and why would anyone purchase or trade for something of no personal use? Because of surplus and because of need this model has almost become synonymous with the marketplace. Consider, however, its shortcomings for a digital marketplace.

Let’s revisit Supply and Demand *. Demand remains constant in a purely digital market, but what is supply? When selling or trading a digital product, the product itself is both the minimum and maximum on-hand quantity necessary for distribution at any level. Downloading an application from a server does not require multiple copies in queue, like a candy dispenser—the speed by which a digital product is available is equivalent to the speed at which I can copy said file to my personal machine. Nor is there any known limit to how many times that original source file can make a duplicate of itself (though certain protections can be placed to prevent duplication).

In short, infinite/limitless quantity reduces cost to the compensation of effort to provide it. I do not pay for air ever; I do, however, pay for a way to get air into a certain location: a tire, a canister, a hot room and so on. We have seen that the margin of cost between mass produced and bespoke in providing digital products is diminished, so again we can assume the cost should be somewhat less than the consumer learning to create the product or service herself.

This does not mean that efficiency has become a moot point. The creation of a digital game would be much more resource-intensive for me than it would for Sony Computer Entertainment or Electronic Arts; both of these companies have developed considerable systems to streamline and optimize the game creation process that I do not possess. As it pertains to time and expertise, they have a clear advantage that will recuperate the cost of the several additionally involved hands.

Which leads to the second shortcoming: supply and demand in the traditional sense requires consistency. There is a demand for apples, so I provide apples. When an equal demand for oranges arises, I look to fulfill that request as well. Pears, bananas, kiwi come along and soon I am contemplating what I can provide and what I will provide. That I can provide boysenberries to my consumers—and that they will readily buy—does not mitigate the expense of providing several different types of fruits from several logistically distinct sources. I may ignore a cry for fruit pastries altogether.

In the same way, a digital provider must be mindful that provisions made for demand do not outstretch the revenue earned from providing. It may cost a digital artisan absolutely nothing to duplicate their product, but how much would it cost to create a version in English? Or in Hindi, which has nearly 80% as many speakers (according to Weber’s “The World’s 10 Most Influential Languages”)? In many cases it will depend on who your target audience is. This, again, takes a very monolithic approach to defining demand.

When we move to something more of a product’s functionality than simply the language it uses, we find that defining the audience requires some large-scale generalizations. There is no product in any market that is designed for one specific person; rather, products are designed to have a certain level of value to many people in a very approximate way. Again, consumers are then left to decide if they want something that works specifically for them or costs the same as it does everyone else. With the potential for custom digital products to be much less cost-prohibitive, we create an opportunity for the quantity of supply to be proportional to the quantity for demand at a level of 1:1—a product created for each purpose of each consumer.

Of course, this utopian vision is retarded by the “make do” mentality. Humans balance their daily lives through sundry-yet-intricate compromises, and for the majority of the earth’s population, “good enough” is much more reasonable than “exactly right.”

In fact, in many cases, we will see consumers combine objects to create or aid in the creation of the solutions they’re actually looking for. This brings us to the final shortcoming of supply and demand: it is based upon supply and demand being independent. The future of the digital world is one where the creator of an object may very well be the sole source of demand for an object, hence making a market pricing irrelevant. Having no intended monetary return, it can be squirreled away as a one-time digital application or can be “discarded” by placing it out where others may partake with no expectation of compensation.

It is in this latter option that we find the tremendous potential for digital growth.

The Enemy of Good (Enough)

For most of human civilization, the quality of a product was equivalent to its usefulness. As a hunter, the inferior bow or arrow meant less accuracy; a dull or brittle spearhead was not effective and thus would not be worth purchasing. As a gatherer, good fruit taken meant mouths fed while those rotten or unripe would have no purpose and could instead bring sickness. In all cases from the earliest of man forward, quality meant satisfaction.

That is, until industrialization hit us. Once production left the hands of the artisan and was placed in the steely arms of machinery, the quality of a product became less about the satisfaction it provided and more about production’s consistent output. In essence, it became a marker of the minimum effort and skill necessary for consumers to find a product useful; a whole science of quality control has been since developed *, ensuring the highest quality product at the lowest cost point—very useful to the manufacturer but only marginally to the user. When quality became a price point—by which people chose to accept products of mediocre build or spend the extra money for hand-crafted artisan work—it created the breeding ground for two strange phenomena: the idea of disposability and the sense of “good enough.”

Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.

The better is the enemy of the good. —Voltaire *

As we hurtle through the age of digitalization these things still matter but in different ways. Manufacturers still need to control their output so that it retains a quality that the consumer finds valuable, but the digital product can be duplicated with practically no cost (Consider: how much does it cost you to make a copy of a file on your computer? Two clicks and an allocation of space? How much more does it cost a software company?). As a result, the margin of cost (initial creation + duplication) between a bespoke digital object and a mass-produced one gets smaller every day. Disposability becomes both essential and irrelevant; with low expense, I can use a product for a one-off task (freeware/shareware thrives on this concept)—but why throw it away? The cost to keep it is equally miniscule. There have been times that I’ve downloaded an application, immediately used it, and just as quickly had no use for it whatsoever; many of those applications still reside on my computer because the effort in finding and deleting is greater than the resource it takes just staying there. relatively new concepts in commerce like the app stores for Android and Apple mobile devices cater specifically to this line of thinking.

This says a lot more about consumer satisfaction than the original industrial process ever did. It says, “if it works, I can do what I planned on doing—and that makes me happy.” In truth, a product’s usefulness never stopped providing satisfaction; we just lost quality as a tool to measure it. Instead, we chased quality unnecessarily to higher price points that, in many cases, did not really do much difference in the way we enjoyed the results but rather indicated status. Audiophiles may adequately justify their expensive equipment, but there’s a reason mainstream producers often take their work out of the studio and listen to it in a car or earbud headphones: when it comes to enjoying the music, often just hearing it is good enough.

Pick a song, any song. If it ever was popular at all, chances are you can find it on YouTube right now. If it had a music video, there’s a good chance that is there as well, though more often than not it will simply be a picture of the artist, an album cover, or a collage of marginally-related images that the uploader has put together. Hundreds of thousands of inferior quality audio files attached to inferior quality imagery online—an inferior medium—yet really obscure items like collaboration project Butter 08’s 1997 track “Butter of 69” * currently has over 30,000 views. Why would poor quality video or even a static image get hundreds of thousands of views? Because people just want to hear the music, and will often let it play in the background, ignoring the image completely. More importantly, there are scores of downloadable and web-based applications that will extract the audio and give it to you in mp3 form. It nearly guarantees that your audio will not be as good as what was originally recorded, but what does that matter? Just having may be good enough.

Growing up in a lower-income, rural environment, the term “good enough” is imprinted in my bones. With so many things economically and logistically out of reach, adults admonished children to make do with what was available. Today, it seems I wasn’t the only one given this advice. In addition to pulling sub-quality (in the industrial sense) audio from unlikely sources, people are using their computers to make phone calls, using their phones to take pictures, and using their photo cameras to record video *. Long gone are the days of “the right tool for the job,” if it will get it done, it’ll do.

This sets the basis for much of the work that many of us do. So very often we are swept up in the latest technology which pushes the boundaries of what is possible when, in reality, our work is much less bleeding edge and much more center of the bell curve. Forget what’s new; what’s most common to the user? In “About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design,” * Alan Cooper and team remind us that the center of the expertise scale is exactly where we should be aiming. The high end usually has a learning curve that is not worth the consumer’s investment; the low end is too simplistic for most and very few hope to remain clueless users. When we design for the “That’ll Do” generation, we bring a balance that humans already have a knack for implementing—through compromise—in their daily lives.

The result is a shift in the post-industrial mentality. The new, post-analogue, digital mentality is one in which the artisan resurfaces, incarnate in every person who creates, manipulates or modifies digitized data. That data itself is by its very nature open to change: edit, deconstruction and reconstruction are its strengths—an attribute never seen before the digital world. Finally, those who see the larger picture of data pervasiveness are given the opportunity to design the parameters by which human interaction with non-human objects is guided.

Starting with a Thesis

Instead of just talking about anime yesterday, I should have explained a little more of what I’ve been thinking about. I’m still working out specific nomenclature, but I hope my premise still makes sense.

I’m going to be examining, among other things, the cost and benefit of society’s shift from monolithic tp modular systems of organization—the organization of information, of people, and of resources. I’ll be frank and honest: a lot of this concept has been provoked by reading/listening to Clay Shirky, Adam Greenfield, and Jan Chipchase while being challenged by the non-theoretical applications of people like Anil Dash, Ev Williams and Jeffrey Veen. I’ll be pointing pretty heavily to these sources at first, but I hope to expand to new competent sources of information as a result of my research.

All said and done, my intention is to analyze and evaluate this burgeoning area to the extent that I can competently present and consult on the impact this will have for society and, occupationally, for existing organizations. I’d love to do this for my current organization, but ultimately at some point I’d really enjoy finding new cases for application of the principles I discover.

If you have any information you think may be relevant to this study, feel free to share.

A Hyperbolic Time Chamber Vacation

After a lot of interesting interactions, I’ve really craved for the time to sit down, think, and map out what’s next for me, for Leftsider, and for the world. Starting today, I’m taking off for a week, and my office is closed the following week, so I’ve got a nice long holiday opportunity to do just that.

There’s so much, though, to cover! So yesterday I brought my second haul of books home and readied myself for the Hyperbolic Time Chamber Vacation.

The Hyperbolic Time Chamber is a bit of deus ex machina used by the writers of the Dragonball Z animation series. A minute in the chamber felt as if it were six hours; as such, one day in the chamber would allow for a year of training. The protagonists, faced with a vastly stronger opponent and very little time, somehow stumbled upon the knowledge of the “room of spirit and time” (translated to hyperbolic time chamber in the english translation) and travelled to it for a week’s worth of preparation.

I’ve not yet figured out how to make a hyperbolic time chamber of my own, but during this holiday I’m going to squeeze as much reading, exercise, and contemplation in as his humanly possible. I’m not travelling anywhere. I’m avoiding calls. I intend to delve deep and come back revived.

After having a nice conversation with @stuyparker, I’ve been inspired to write daily. I’m hoping to use my HTCV as a springboard for this habit. Let’s see how it goes.

Back at Zero

Today I am broke. Very broke. It is a very temporary broke, and it is due to a reliance upon others to accomplish duties—and that is all that I will say about that. I am personally back on the task and shall remain on the task until a more suitable solution is found.

What frustrates me so intensely about being broke is how it feels: so foreign yet so familiar. I grew up poor and I remember not having money as being the norm. I didn’t have an allowance; we did occasionally not pay one bill in order to pay another. It wasn’t until being on my own for a couple years that I came to experience a life where life itself was not dictated by what I owed. I was not rich, but I was not under.

I cherished that feeling. I promised myself that my goal would be to feel this way forever. I didn’t need wealth; I just needed to not think about money. What started as a simple solution (getting paid $1000/mo; using $1500-limit card to pay all $800 of monthly expenses; paying off card in full each month) grew to literally create a padding around me, shielding me from that past reality of have-nots.

That seems like ages ago. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to not know which card to use, to wonder if the ATM will give you cash. It burns to feel myself in the red, no longer fireproof. It infuriates me; turns me from the calm philosophical idealist I’m known for into the analytical taskmaster asshole that I am intrinsically. Not only am I broke; I’m miserable.

Regarding the silver lining, I am reminded that there are no perpetual machines. Craftsmanship extends beyond release date and into the extended warranty. I am given a chance to improve the original system—as well as a motivation to apply myself passionately. The holidays may be dimmer than usual, but the new year holds promise of a phoenix-like rebirth of honesty, craftsmanship, and good intent.

A Herb in the Garden

I mentioned my colleague Daryl who took me all around England during my week there; what I haven’t mentioned is how infectious he is. There are several other things besides admiration for the queen which he planted in my head while there—the first of which is a curiosity for home gardening.

I grew up in the country and my father had a rather large garden. It eventually just became a large strawberry patch and, ultimately, a half-court space for a basketball hoop I received after finishing 8th grade. Since then, I’ve never even thought of gardening—though I have consistently had a plant or two in the house over the last decade.

My first full day in, Daryl had me over for lunch with his family. A cute house they recently moved into, they’d done some extensive gardening in the backyard. Of particular interest to me was a little box of herbs and leafy things from which we picked ingredients for salad. I thought to myself, “I should do this on my little balcony!”

So I started hunting up information to learn how to grow my own salad. Also, I’m thinking of seasonal plants and crops to potentially make this a year-round activity.

I know it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to grow enough really replace grocery produce, but perhaps it will lead to an interesting activity that will only expand—perhaps to a place with a bigger balcony?

Recipe for Family

My younger sister has entered a phase where her seeming pastime is to repeatedly lament the quality and repairability of our family. Long story made short, I had typical teenage angst until I went away to boarding school (not because of behavior) in 1995—just months before my parents divorced. My sister bore the brunt of the separation alone and I move on my own shortly after freshman year of college. Today, she and I live walking distance from each other, yet neither of us really see the other nor do we maintain more than occasional obligatory contact with our parents.

This is most certainly a dysfunctional home. It is by no means bad, but there’s no one calling it ideal. “Ideal” and “broken” are two different things. My sister sees friends, coworkers, and acquaintances who seem to pretty unanimously have more frequent interaction with their family, and that of a higher caliber. While I question the sampling—the grass is always greener, after all—my greater inclination is to identify the recurring theme that exists within these examples yet is absent in our situation.

Over the years I’ve come to recognize the shortcomings that have led to my familial awkwardness. I believe that these, spun positively, create the basic ingredients for successful family.

• Shared Experiences There is no family without a common thread. There must be something that you can relate to/with in order to maintain a familial culture. This is Intercultural Communication 101: perceived cultural similarities are what allow us to make the connections that build the foundation of our grouping. Even if events are not experienced by all parties, communicating the experience allows for understanding and, hopefully, sympathy. In the last 15 years or so, I’ve had about 10 addresses (which includes time spent living overseas); I moved too frequently to generate large quantities of mutually experienced events and failed to update others as I moved on. This has lead to a bifurcation of one life into many—the most stark being the disconnect/reconnect I experience when visiting Korea.
• Physical Proximity. While not the most important aspect, closeness allows for greater preservation of shared values and experiences. It also allows for an atmosphere of family to develop. Close proximity means you see the good and bad; the experiences that are conveyed are not one-sided but real and near to your own. Moving away from my family at a young age and not returning to my home state had a significant impact on the frequency with which I engage with childhood friends and family in non-obligatory situations.
• Active Maintenance. Consistent habits help to counter balance life’s centrifugal forces. Though spokes start from a center and spread in every direction, the inner and outer hub create a zone where divergent intents can still act cooperatively. Those who amicably share a location but develop varying interests often still find camaraderie, and maintaining daily/frequent contact has nurtured relationships when those involved are forced to be very far apart. Unfortunately, I’ve never been good at maintaining anything; let alone relationships.
• * Commitment.* Nearly every conversation I have with my sister about this ends with me offering a theory to be proven: If she, Fru and I made a commitment to have one meal together each day for 90 days, the quality of family-ness between the three of us (I believe) will skyrocket. After that, it would just be up to us to provide active maintenance. I’ve committed to something similar with Fru as we build our marriage; my sister’s being in the area is based on a commitment I made to be closer to her, and I’m hoping to draw others to the area as well.

I don’t think my family is broken. With a little effort, small steps could create fantastic improvements. I think that in all relationships—not just mine, not just with family—these elements are proven keys to group-making and group-keeping. Feel free to adjust my recipe to fit your palate.