Digital Sharecroppers Unite!

The digital sharecroppers plight, however, is worse than that of the Mexican peon. At least the peon can rely on the unchanging continuity of soil. The digital sharecropper's soil changes every day. When he exchanges his goods in the market, the digital sharecropper has trade with farmers whose products come from a different ecosystem (Apple vs. PC). The digital sharecropper has to buy a new tractor, reaper and plow every few months (version 1.0 vs. version 1.5). Every few years the entire industry is shifted and the digital sharecropper has to learn to cultivate an entirely new species of plant (linear vs. nonlinear). Every other few years, the soil changes its entire chemistry and requires different seeds, equipment, water and air (analog vs. digital). And every ten years or so, the digital sharecropper has to relearn his entire trade, equivalent to the tenant farmer becoming a tuna fisherman (video production vs. web design)

You may have done pie charts of your company's expenses in a typical year. Have you ever stopped to figure out what size slice would go to learning curve and compatibility issues? Take just one product. Start with the time spent reading magazines like this one, then perusing user groups on the net and talking to other professionals, then shopping for the new product, then installing and integrating the new product, then learning it, then perhaps, finding out that the product doesn't perform as expected and spending time debugging the product and maybe even uninstalling it, reconfiguring your system and taking the product back, and finally looking over your shoulder to find out how soon you'll have to begin the process all over again.

Now multiply that loss over several products per year, but you still aren't done. What about compatibility with other vendors and your clients? How much money do we waste supporting two or more formats? How many hours in conversion? How many abandonments of good ideas because we can't get an Excel graphic from a MAC to a PC for a PowerPoint presentation? How many extra lease agreements to buy machines (and software, and updates to software and peripherals and updates to peripherals) from both formats? How much time discussing the matter? How much lost synergy because we're not on the same page with other thinkers?

What does this cost, in addition to the retail cost of product and operating system? My guess is that renting the soil is our industry's greatest expense category. It is a constant struggle and it impoverishes and exhausts us.

At the core of this struggle there always seems to be a duality - a "this vs. that." And it is my opinion that most of these dualities are planned for and created by the manufacturers on whose technology our work depends. Rather than build their businesses on the old fashioned basis of value - quality - they build empires based on incremental incompatible improvements (I3). {EDITOR'S NOTE: THE PREVIOUS CHARACTER IS AN EXPONENTIAL '3" as in I-Cube)

Our industry isn't like the auto industry, for instance, where the learning curve has remained flat and yet, year after year, we buy cars with better styling, better safety, better performance. Our industry forces us to learn to drive all over again every month while issues of quality and performance run a far second to issues of compatibility between Product A and Product B.

The core of Taoist belief, as I understand it, is that contentment comes with the awareness of dualities; and their harm to human happiness. Taoists try to unify dualities if possible and to balance them if not. My limited experience has suggested that dualities abound in direct proportion to wealth; and are often created by third parties seeking to divide and conquer those who are rightful heirs to said wealth.

Here I am, a twenty year veteran of this business, still worried about the same damn things I was worried about when I started; which of two whatsits I was going to spend my meager profits on so that I could stay in business and not go broke. When I started out, film, the dominant medium was struggling against the upcoming video technology (a "learn a new trade" duality). Now, it's Apple vs. Intel (a "digital ecosystem" duality). Tomorrow it'll be DPS vs. Targa (a "species change" duality); Netscape vs. Microsoft Explorer (a "soil chemistry" duality) ; Lightwave vs. Max (species); Digital Beta vs. Digital-S (species); Windows 95 vs. Windows 98 (tractor duality). I'm sick and tired of this crap, aren't you?

When are companies going to go back to the days of competing on the basis of quality and not on the basis of proprietary algorithms that are basically designed to cut our creative workforce into warring camps of bickering and confusion?

Just like the English, who, for centuries, pitted Protestant against Catholic in order to rob Ireland of its rightful heirs; or like certain US corporations who pit the right and left of South American countries in endless coups in order to obtain a cheap labor pool; or the like the warlords of Bosnia and Somalia who exploit historical conflicts in order to earn kickbacks from arms merchants; so the power mongers in the video-computer business continually develop conflicting formats that divide and conquer you and me, keeping us in relative poverty while they pocket all the cash.

The last twenty years of technological advancement can be mapped with one duality after another: Ektachrome vs. U-matic, U-matic vs. Betacam (this duality created within one brand!), Betamax vs. VHS, NTSC vs. PAL and SECAM, and the longest running battle of all, MAC vs. PC. Copy this map on an acetate and lay it over the geography of your current status in the industry and you will see, without a doubt, that we, the creative heirs to this digital empire, the ones who give it value, are but mere digital sharecroppers.

Instead of bridging the gap between MACs and PCs with a unified operating system, the powers that be invest in each other's stock and continue to embellish their empires with developments of dubious value. Consider the value of "metafiles," which now enable a nonlinear edit master to encapsulate all of the source tape information into a few megabytes during the color bars. Impressive a development as this may seem, one could also view it as a means by which the land owners can easily change their grape pickers and seek lower bids. No longer does an editor retain the core information of an edit like a photographer retains his negatives. Metafiles turns this information, the editor's proprietary stakehold, over to the contractor who can offer the original editor's creative efforts to any one of a number of lowball revision editors.

Is our industry aware enough to distinguish between genuine technological advancements and mere "carrot" technology, designed to keep us pulling the cart or ignorance?

I recently assisted in focus groups where PC and MAC devotees were treated to side-by-side comparisons with a third computer type that ran rings around both machines and cost about the same as each. The reactions were nearly identical to the proponents of any holy war you could name. The dominant market share here, PCers, saying sure, they'd switch, but what are we going to do about those flaming MAC users, who persist in creating wares that demand complex conversion to the dominant platform. The MACsters, meanwhile, swearing fealty to their tractors, even to saying that if given the better machine for free, they'd still use their MAC.

What does this limited horizon thinking do to us? .

Our training programs, marketing presentations, commercials, sitcoms, dramas, news specials, multimedia CD-ROM entertainments, websites - even our email - are influenced by the formats in which we work. If we are wasting precious hours converting data between redundant formats, or worse, constantly bickering about which format is best - if we are always just struggling to break even - can we ever really use our full potential to use our media tools to create a better world, free of petty conflict?

Although we represent the most technologically advanced sector of the global economy, we all still live in a digitally provincial world, as limited as that of a dust bowl tenant farmer and almost as powerless. Consider seriously the advantages of each new product you buy to enhance your business. There are those that offer significant advancements, but many more that offer only the "I3" shackles - Incremental Incompatible Improvements - and continued servitude.

Engage your associates in active information exchange, encouraging bridges between conflicting camps. Further, engage manufacturers at conventions and public forums in large groups of contentious customers, challenging their philosophy and demanding higher standards. Remember, that our goal is first to achieve uniformity and then to compete. The key is to pursue quality and reject duality. Your choices determine all of our futures.