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Tue Aug 24 21:06:42 2010 Time Magazine Now for adults!
My made-up (but plausible!) Time cover from 2006 Image courtesy of wavepacket It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Time Magazine. In 2006 I wrote a blog entry criticizing Time. And in 2002 I was sufficiently upset to write a letter to the editor, which you can see here. But after a while I stopped caring, since after all, they have magazines to sell, and I have better things to do (and read). So I stopped subscribing years ago. However, today The Onion published a hilarious video about Time: Advanced, which pretty much captures my feelings. It is sometimes brutal, but maybe Time has backslid even more since I last read it. To be fair, the editors are just trying to play to the lowest common denominator, so they can keep as wide a subscription base as possible. When you do that, you'll end up with something like Time. But The Onion video is awesome. Comments	Related: > books < Unrelated: economics energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics predictions science

Mon May 25 23:33:34 2009 TV Shows are Dead Say goodbye to the TV series...
The peak of the art form. Image courtesy of NBC I'm not the best person to make predictions about TV shows, since I don't actually watch any. But even someone who only watches other people watch TV shows can see a few trends: There are a lot more TV channels now then there were 10-20 years ago. There are a lot more TV shows out there. People are spending more time on the Internet. This is an interesting paper, covering how TV has evolved over the past 30 years. Some of the stats: The number of TV stations in the US doubled between 1975 and 2004 (mostly due to the growth of cable). Most TV stations operate with a 15-40% profit margin (!) Then, this paper, which as far as I can tell covers leisure time in the Netherlands, notes that TV viewing per week grew a lot from 1980 - 1990, but was mostly flat after 1990 (although still growing!). According to that, people spend from 11.5 - 17 hours per week watching TV. Wow. However, time spent on the PC or Internet grew from basically zero in 1980 to over two hours now. Also, it grew the most among the 35-54 year olds, so the people watching the least TV (11.5 hours per week) were also the demographic spending the most time online (2.1 hours per week). And finally, this presentation (why is it North European countries measure their leisure time so well?) has some great data. Namely, their "Time spent on media, population 12+" graph, which shows: Time spent watching TV, in hours per week, has declined sharply between 2000 and 2005. People watch less TV now than they did in 1990! PC + Internet time has steadily climbed, and is still on a sharp ramp up. Their graph shows an average of 4 hours per week. Time spent reading books is more or less flat from 1975-2005. Time spent listening to the radio is down hugely, from almost 2 hours per week in 1975 to around 30 minutes now. Newspapers and Journals have declined (as measured by how much time people spend per week with them). I see the future of TV shows. Image courtesy of BenFrantzDale (wiki) So the summary: people are spending more and more time online, and less with other media--except maybe books. And it's a double-whammy for TV networks, since there are more of them competing for less of peoples' time. What does this mean for TV shows? At the moment, TV shows are hitting some rough times. All that sells on the networks is reality TV such as American Idol or Survivor. Other good shows such as Firefly get shut down due to poor ratings (I'm not a Firefly fan but I know many people who were disappointed when the series was cancelled--and I think it was better programming than most shows out there! But I didn't help Joss Whedon any, since as I said, I'm not really a TV watcher). The TV execs are wondering what sort of programming will save them. Probably nothing will save them! TV series will go away, and in 5-10 years we won't watch them. Why? Everything will be online. There is absolutely no reason to watch anything on TV except for live telecasts such as sports. Watching online gives you as good or better resolution. Most importantly, you can pick when you want to watch the show, and you can pause and play whenever you want. Your viewing schedule isn't tied to the network's broadcast schedule. I don't think syndicated shows (that is, shows consisting of multiple episodes) will go away. But the medium will change, and TV will be left behind. Here are my predictions: TV shows will be made more and more by independent producers. It will start with YouTube, and get more sophisticated as experienced TV producers shift to the new medium. Broadcast timeslots will go away. Instead, TV producers will announce when the next episode is available for download. If you really want to watch your TV show right away, you can watch it right as it becomes available. TV producers (and the services that host their content) may continue to stagger release times, just as they do now, just to keep load down. (For instance, they wouldn't want to release all new episodes of all shows to the world at the exact same time.) Networks go away. Instead, you (as the viewer) will pay either the producers directly, or websites that accumulate and host the content. DVD revenue will disappear (and that includes Blu-Ray). Why pay for DVDs or Blu-Ray discs when you can download your shows whenever you want? It's the same model that is making the distribution of movies complicated. I have no idea what the new revenue model will be. Everything driven by product placement? Companies will fund high-quality shows in exchange for regular advertising? Most likely, the revenue model will consist of websites that pull content from the producers of the shows, and add targeted advertisements to viewers that want to download. So TV shows will start to fade into history. People will soon talk about the hot new Internet show they're watching instead. You heard it here first! (Especially if you're from Denmark, since I know you read a lot of blogs in your leisure time). Comments	Related: economics > books < predictions Unrelated: energy environment geopolitics lists mathematics science

Tue Jun 3 22:38:01 2008 Fooled By Randomness A book report.
Don't be fooled! Image courtesy of Maximaximax (wiki) I recently read (well, re-read) Nassim Taleb's Fooled By Randomness, subtitled "The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets." It is an excellent book, well-worth reading for two reasons: It is written in a fairly direct style. Mr. Taleb is clearly opinionated and felt he should tell his story, regardless of what publishers thought. It makes a strong case for how much randomness influences what we do and perceive, and how little we notice it. Randomness definitely affects everyone. But Mr. Taleb has worked for over a decade as an options trader, subject to the daily fluctuations of multiple global markets. And he has seen traders and companies rise and fall based on randomness. Randomness was very explicit there (although not obvious to everyone), and once he saw its pervasive effects in that industry, he was able to generalize the concept to other areas. I had two main take-aways. The first take-away was a deeper appreciation for the Survivor Bias, which occurs when a supposedly statistical study fails to include all data properly. In finance, it is common to compare only long-lived mutual funds (for example) and ignore all of those that have failed. It is very sobering to realize that if you put a bunch of people and funds into place, had them guess randomly about investments and tracked them over time, you would see many fail and a few survive for a long time (by chance)--exactly the same situation we observe today! Only we don't say long-lived or successful funds are random survivors. We say the fund managers are geniuses, and expect them to repeat their successes. (Again, soberingly, most don't). The second take-away was people's poor appreciation for probability. Even in his world of trading, where people with scientific and mathematics backgrounds were working on algorithmic strategies, there was a disconnect with simple statistics. Even basic concepts such as Expected Value were often missed! Nassim's main point was that a person well-versed in basic probability, and aware of the large role of randomness in the world, could avoid many common mistakes and maybe even make money off other peoples' ignorance. Certainly that's true in his profession. It isn't a perfect book. He extended some of the survivorship bias to good people management. I think enough of us have had good (and bad!) managers to know that good managers often aren't survivors--they are actually good managers. I see Nassim's point that sometimes managers get lucky (due to happening to manage an organization during a moment of critical success or riding a market bubble, etc.), so a few "star" CEOs may actually be just average managers who happened to be at the right place at the right time. But some of his arguments here felt a bit jaded. Still, an overall enjoyable read, and a good reminder while the markets are in their current volatile state. I don't know how Mr. Taleb did in the subprime mortgage crash, but given his stated preference for targeting large crashes, I suspect he did quite well. Comments	Related: economics mathematics > books < Unrelated: energy environment geopolitics lists predictions science

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