Come see the Long Tail of Time--Live!

I'm excited about a Long Now event that I'll be doing on "the Long Tail of Time" with Will Hearst this Friday in San Francisco. I've been doing a lot of research on what I call the "4th dimension" of the Long Tail, and this will be the first time most of it sees the light of day. Some hints are here and here, but there's more. It's a rich seam.

The official announcement follows:

This Friday Chris Anderson (WIRED's editor) and Will Hearst (from Kleiner Perkins) take the "long tail" revolution into a new dimension---time.  They have good news for long-term thinking: the tyranny of the new is over.

 

"How endless choice is creating unlimited demand" is the description line on Anderson's forthcoming book (July), THE LONG TAIL.  Thanks to plummeting costs of inventory and distribution on the Internet, best-sellers of anything (products, services, ideas) sell better than ever, but so does everything else, and that changes the world.  Tiny-sellers to tiny niches now have aggregate power greater than the best-sellers that used to rule.

 

But what about old stuff?  Google is a time machine, says Anderson.  Old stuff, instead of vanishing the way it used to, now accumulates more links over time and thus more "authority."  Search engines value relevance over freshness. 

The new is always provisional.  The consequential old is perpetually on tap, its consequence always renegotiable.  Internet time, long considered pathologically rapid, apparently contains its own cure.

Note the different venue this month.  Instead of Fort Mason, the talk will be at The Palace of Fine Arts Theater :

"The Long Time Tail," Chris Anderson with Will Hearst, Palace of Fine Arts Theater (by the Exploratorium), San Francisco, 7pm, Friday, May 12. The lecture starts promptly at 7:30pm.  Admission is free ($10 donation welcome as ever, not required).

This is one of a monthly series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking organized by The Long Now Foundation, usually on second Fridays, usually at Fort Mason (but not this time).  If you would like to be notified by email of forthcoming talks, please contact Simone Davalos--- simone@longnow.org,

Directions are here; a map is here. Everyone's welcome. Hope to see you there!

Comments

[Financial Reflections]

Anyone who's set up a website has noticed the time delay with sites like Google. It is quite a shock after getting things "instantly" on so many web sites as a consumer. As a developer, there's a time warp going on with Google, and part of it is intentional, from what I understand.

It also works in favor of the folks who are at the head instead of the long tail. The time barrier is long enough to keep those who aren't determined to overcome it at bay.

[David]

Chris, wish we could make it to your talk. The Long Now seminar series is one of the many great things we miss out on down here in L.A. We were up in SF for a visit last year, and it happened to fall on a 2nd Friday. The Long Now event was a real highlight of our trip. Be ready for some good questions. There are a lot of really smart people in the audience :)

[fm transmitter]

The long tail is really a _long_ tail, i.e. it cumulatively adds up over time, but takes a very long time (if ever) to reach zero views.

Did your research take into account methods of obtaining information about a particular video ? Embedded videos, deliberate search, on keywords in external search or internal search, or from direct links (and from where)?

One key note of importance in Anderson's book is the notion of "bringing viewers/users/customers down the tail"..