When I send a letter through the Royal Mail, I pay. Because we always have. Also, as it’s such an old service, I know what has to go into it because my parents were able to explain the system since I was a nipper.
royal mail logo
In-fact I’m confident enough to know the modern Royal mail is a bit amazing with its hundreds of trucks, trains, planes, people, sorting offices, OCR readers that can’t do valentines cards cos they’re red envelopes etc.. etc.. Strangely enough I even know a little bit of their company history. Like letters being stolen, constant striking and the ongoing plight of a postie in shorts on a winter’s day.
So to be honest, that’s not bad. And because I know all this about the company. I respect that it costs them to send mail around the world. Even something as small as a letter to me mam’.
But with online services, are all we missing is an understanding of the service we’re being offered, which is currently often for free? Do we have the knowledge and respect of all the servers grinding away in previously disused hangers, do we know about the plight of the tech-admin who is trying to keep all his ports open to the right stuff but not allow the hackers in. The cost it takes to run the tech support, and then bandwidth pain of bottlenecks in the speed.
Server Farm
I bet the vast population of the GMTV audience don’t, because even as a technical director I could barely scratch the surface, so how would the average techie person know?
However, in about 30 years, their kids might. Because Google is becoming common interest in traditional media, Facebook is used by everyone. Which can only lead to more interest and general knowledge in the system.
And because of that wide-spread general knowledge, then they won’t feel so weird paying a few pence for watching a few online videos. Because, you know it costs.
This post is tagged cash, facebook, gmtv, knowledge, pay, royal mail, server, service, youtube
Well quite – this is all to do with the myth of the immaterial nature of the digital. We’ve all been sucked into an ideological view that somehow computing – because its not industrial – is resource free. I’ve always thought the idea of ‘cyberspace’ that relies on postman pat to actually make any money is a good paradox. You should have a look at the papers that we posted in PMHub from Sean Cubitt’s presentation on ‘Ubiquitous Media Rare Earth’ – server farms now have as big a carbon footprint as airlines in the U.S. That doesn’t mean we all want pay though !