our next speaker is going to join us to
talk about the power of creative
expression please welcome the stage leo
laporte
hello everybody it's good to see you now
i have 18 minutes so i'm going to start
my timer here you'll forgive me that's
what i'm holding here
this guy's just sitting here he's not
actually doing anything
i'm so glad to see you today i was
really glad to see muhammad's
presentation because that's exactly what
i'm taking off from i wouldn't be here
if it weren't for the internet
and
the internet is an opportunity for all
of
us
to communicate and that's what i'm here
to talk about today just for those of
you who don't know me i i'm a
broadcaster an old media guy for 32
years i did radio and tv
newspapers
magazines
i've written 13 books all old media
stuff
and
you know that's been a great living
but in the last five years something's
changed for me i've discovered the new
media and i feel i almost feel like
somebody who's got
one foot on the dock of old media it's
been nice and solid and then another
foot on the on the boat of new media and
it's starting to sail
and i and i feel like i'm being split a
little bit but i'm about to make that
leap over to new media and i want to
invite you to do the same thing because
it is
the
most democratizing force in the world
it's exactly as muhammad said it's a
chance for all of us to communicate and
the world really needs
new media right now it really needs for
us to speak together
and
i and do a little
i have a little podcast network i work
out of northern california little
victorian era cottage it's all nice
paneled wood but it's loaded with
technology i do about 20
podcasts a week i do about 30 hours of
live video i've built essentially
an internet television and radio station
in this little cottage in the middle of
nowhere in northern california
and i reach an audience that's
completely global it's all over the
world a much bigger audience than i ever
reached on television or radio or
magazines or newspapers
and it's been a wonderful experience for
me it's really
given me a chance to meet a lot of
people and a lot of people a chance to
hear what i have to say but i don't want
to own it i want to give it away i want
all of you to be doing the same thing
i was at a dinner party
about a month ago
and the hosts had a really neat idea
they hired a piano player and they got
us all to sing
at this dinner party i did not sing i
decided to avoid that but everybody else
did and it was a remarkable experience
and i was thinking well this must have
been how it used to be
how people used to entertain themselves
how we used to get together we'd we'd
read stories or we'd sing songs or we'd
do skits we'd entertain ourselves
and about a hundred years ago all of
that changed
when mass media
intruded into our homes and television
and radio started to entertain us and
professionals started to do it and we
stopped doing it for ourselves we gave
it away we let them
do all the entertaining and we stopped
now maybe it's different in your home
but i have to say
certainly in the united states most
people spend the average about six or
seven hours a day
watching television
just passively consuming
entertainment not making anything of
their own
clay shirky it who's a wonderful
philosopher of media uh in his uh very
highly recommended essay called here
comes everybody says that what really
happened is that the information age was
so overwhelming that we all just
retreated into our basements to watch
baywatch
and just give up you know it was a way
of giving up
i'm not sure that's what happened i
think really in a way we got seduced by
mass media and it has put us to sleep
but it's a chance now for us to wake up
from that you know the two things happen
technology's changed our lives you know
for the last
several millennia and technology was
what brought mass media uh to us you
know a hundred years ago with the
invention of radio and then of
television
um
everything changed when radio was first
created marconi
thought it was a one-to-one
communications medium
he thought it was really about uh you
know i'll i'll call you ship to shore
and there a guy named david sarnoff was
a telegraph operator who who even tells
a story of how he was the telegraph
operator who received the news that the
titanic was sinking there's some
question about that he loved to tell
stories but sarnoff
wrote a very famous memo in 1916 that
said you know
there's more to radio than just me
talking to another guy
this could be a music hall a concert in
a box we could put these in every home
in the in the nation and eventually
every home in the world
and the marconi corporation said yeah
crazy forget about it
so sarnoff went off and started a
company of his own called rca
and within a year sold hundreds of
millions of radios they gave away free
concerts free music they put it in every
home in the nation it was the fastest
growing medium ever
television had somewhat of the same
success in fact sarnoff was very much
involved in that
it it took over our lives
mass media was incredibly successful it
was successful for another reason
because right about that time
a fellow named ed edward bernays
founded the modern
science of public relations and
marketing
he was born in vienna he his uncle was
sigmund freud
and bernays
said you know
if we would just use old uncle siggy's
ideas
we could vince could convince people to
buy more stuff
we could convince people to change their
ideas he brought freudian psychology
into advertising with devastating effect
it was very very effective
he's famous for instance
one of his clients was lucky strikes the
cigarettes
and there was a problem lucky strike
said you know only men smoke in public
women won't smoke in public we've got to
somehow convince women to smoke in
public
so
edward bernay said no problem
hired a bunch of young ladies attractive
young ladies to march in a big parade in
new york city around the turn of the
century smoking what he called torches
of freedom
and he tied it to
feminism to liberation to being able to
smoke in public and it was a huge
success and women all over the country
started smoking cigarettes he was the
guy who created i don't know if you use
this term in your advertising four out
of five doctors have you seen that in
the ads four out of five doctors
recommend
he he got hired by the bacon producers
now everybody knows bacon's not good for
you but what he did is he went to
doctors and he said well wouldn't it be
better if people had hearty breakfasts
he surveyed five thousand doctors and
got him to say yes people need to eat
hearty bacon and egg breakfasts and he
said four out of five doctors recommend
bacon for breakfast
a huge success so this guy really
pioneered modern advertising and wanted
this kind of advertising needed it
needed mass numbers it was effective the
more people you could reach the better
so along comes this new way of
advertising and before then advertising
was really
a list of features and benefits you
should use our product because it's this
this and this it was very
straightforward
now all of a sudden advertising is don't
let your friends smell you coming or you
know you might have bad breath nobody
will want to kiss you it used these
fears these primal fears to to get
people to do stuff and it needed a mass
market along comes mass media television
and radio it was a perfect marriage and
for the last hundred years they've
completely dominated
the psyche
well i've worked in that medium i know
how it works and it really is
designed exactly that way but something
is changing
and
it's changed for me i started doing
podcasts about five years ago and we
started doing these podcasts aimed at
people who are interested in technology
i do gadgets i do open source i do
macintosh and windows and linux
it's a whole network of podcasts we
reach millions of people it's grown very
very fast because we're authentic we're
genuine uh we sh we are enthusiastic
about it and most importantly because we
treat our audience as intelligent
this is something the mass media
couldn't do
because advertisers were very afraid of
intelligent people
they felt like if you're intelligent we
can't seduce you with our messages you
might think four out of five doctors
recommend bacon
and they don't want you thinking
so
advertising was really aimed at
the lowest common denominator mass media
was aimed at the lowest common
denominator and it was vastly successful
because of it
unfortunately
we're smart
and i talk to smart people
and all of a sudden advertisers are
realizing that's who they really want
the new the new media is working better
for them than the old media if you look
at google and facebook these advertisers
are being are able to buy specific
audiences of people they're able to
target them directly they're able to
advertise to people who want to buy
their product and it works better than
tricking people
tricking people has stopped working
we aren't we're getting wiser all of
this great internet stuff that muhammad
was talking about is actually educating
people and so this form of advertising
just doesn't work as well as it used to
so it's very exciting times advertisers
are coming to me saying we want an
intelligent audience who wants to hear
an authentic message but we don't want
to buy 18 million people we want to buy
this very thin slice of people we want
to aim at people who are going to buy
our product and they're buying facebook
and google for the same reason because
they get a very specific targeted
audience and they're starting to move
away from these mainstream
uh forms of broadcasting so that's it's
a great opportunity because it means all
of a sudden there's funding and support
for grassroots broadcasting for
podcasting and that's what i do and
that's what i want to encourage you to
do to blog
to podcast to create videos on youtube
we're suddenly seeing explosion of user
created content everywhere you've all
seen it haven't you
but we've been
trained for our whole lifetimes to sit
down and shut up
to be an environment like this where one
person talks and you listen and it's
fundamentally undemocratic see the
problem with mass media is it's very
expensive to create
only the person who can afford to buy a
printing press or buy a television
station or a radio station
a music
recording studio could make this content
for the last hundred years
that's what's really changing we really
have two things that are happening here
we have the low cost of production
the digital technology has made it
possible for anybody with a computer a
microphone to create a radio show if
you've got a video camera you can create
a youtube video and be seen not just in
your country but all over the world by
millions and millions of people if
you've got a internet access you can
write a blog and instead of you know
having to go to a publisher hat in hand
saying i want a chance to have this book
be heard and then somebody gets to say
yes or no to it you just do it you go
out there you go to a site like lulu and
you publish that book or you publish it
on a blog and so many more people can
read it so it's a huge opportunity here
because the cost of producing media has
disappeared
it's gone to virtually nothing that's
what one of the things that that digital
revolution has brought us that's so
exciting
the other side of it is distribution is
now widely available
yokai bengkler in his book the wealth of
nations estimates or wealth of networks
i should say estimates that there are
about a billion people worldwide who
have access to the tools and the
internet
so that they sufficient to do
television and radio to do their own
programming their own shows everybody in
here probably has access to those kinds
of tools
so all of a sudden it's cheap to do it
and you know i have to say that the old
media is fighting back
the these these guys who had the money
to build the radio and tv stations don't
like the idea that not only is the
audience moving away from them but
advertisers are moving away from them
they're fighting back
just yesterday in beijing
a big conference about 300
media old media types
rupert murdoch and tom curley rupert
murdoch you know tom curley is the head
of the associated press both stood up
and said google's ripping us off
how dare google
publish links to our articles how dare
bloggers
talk about the stuff that we have spent
so much time and money to put together
on our newspapers and in our associated
press feeds and we're going to shut them
down
and i could i was stunned i thought
these people really don't understand
what's happening do they they come from
this old world where they had the
monopoly because they had the means
they had the voice they got to choose
who spoke they got to choose who read
they totally controlled the media
and they want to do exactly the same
thing to google they said how dare they
publish links to our articles
i thought are they crazy don't they know
how much traffic google is driving to
them don't they understand that if
they're no longer seen on google
they disappear in the modern era
they don't understand
they think you're going to continue to
buy their newspapers or rupert murdoch
thinks that well okay maybe you won't
buy the newspaper but you'll certainly
buy access to my internet site no
you won't
so it's it's stunning to me to see the
same thing they sound very much like the
record executives did in the us about
five years ago when they said
you're stealing our music
all right i don't know if they do it
here when you go to a movie in the
states bef you know you've paid 10 13 to
see this movie in the u.s and they run
an ad saying stop stealing our movies
i just paid 13 i'm not stealing your
movies they think of us their customers
as thieves
fine see you later bye bye it's the end
of the line for this old media they no
longer control the means of production
we all can do it
they no longer control the distribution
we have access to a much better
distribution network than anybody we
have access to the internet which is
fully global
so it really but it's really important
that we take advantage of this
opportunity that is offered to us now
that we go out and be heard because
we've been trained to sit down and shut
up and i think it's now time to start
standing up and being heard so
i come here to you to tell you times
have changed
the opportunity is here
stop being a passive consumer start
telling the story start singing the song
start playing the music and doing the
skits start putting your word out there
you might at first feel i remember when
i first started blogging nobody wants to
read what i have to say how egotistical
is this it feels a little strange
because we're so used to the
professionals doing it
it's your time
it's our time it's a chance for us to
speak and the value of us speaking is so
huge
because people want to hear authentic
voices they want to hear real people
they're tired of seeing
perfectly quaffed and made-up actors
tell the stories it's our time to tell
the stories and if we all tell our story
and if the
if every one of us goes out there and
and creates content
it's a real chance for us to have peace
in this world for us as muhammad said to
to to learn about every person every
culture and to no longer see that
culture as the enemy it's so important
uh that we all do it it's much more
important frankly that you all do it
then that those of us in the states who
have controlled the media for so long do
you know we've had our chance and and
now it's really uh it's your chance to
get out there and and to start speaking
and to let the word
uh go forth
so that's all i have to say i just want
to encourage you to do it and and
encourage you to find a computer and
start writing a blog if it's twitter go
ahead and start doing that if it's uh if
it's youtube start making a video
somebody once said to me well wait a
minute leo if everybody if a billion
people start publishing stuff who's
going to know what's good who's going to
know what's great
how are we going to even it's being a
sea of information
the science fiction author theodore
sturgeon
once very famously said 80 percent of
everything is junk he was a very cranky
man and i think maybe
maybe he was even an optimist maybe 90
of it let's say 99 of everything is junk
i'm that's fair and and but if one in a
hundred isn't
that's huge you know mohammed just
pointed out that how many videos on
youtube every minute on youtube 10 hours
of video is uploaded
they just crossed a billion
views a day a billion people a day are
looking at videos on youtube
well if only one percent of that is good
do the math for me how many is that
is that that's 10 million
great videos
that's out of every 10 hours at six
minutes a minute uploaded of great stuff
that's more than you can watch in a
lifetime it's six times more than you
can watch in a lifetime so don't be
don't hold back
don't worry that they're going to be too
many voices
the good stuff will rise it is now a
meritocracy we have moved out of this
era of uh you know the rich get to say
what gets heard and what's said the
people who own the printing presses the
people who determine freedom of the
press now we all get to and we all want
to hear your voice so i come to you as a
as a former broadcaster as a as a
newborn podcaster saying let's all do
this i invite you to join in and create
some content we want to hear what you
have to say thank you
thank you
you