{"id":519,"date":"2003-11-16T18:18:19","date_gmt":"2003-11-16T22:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2003\/11\/16\/getting-the-word-out\/"},"modified":"2003-11-16T18:18:19","modified_gmt":"2003-11-16T22:18:19","slug":"getting-the-word-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2003\/11\/16\/getting-the-word-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting the word out"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Broadcasting<\/STRONG> timely \/ breaking information to those who care about it should be easy<\/STRONG>.  <\/P>
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The absolute cost of broadcasting from one computer to another is under $1\/GB, even after amortizing the cost of the sending machine\/hardware and assuming moderate economies of scale.  This is on the order of a millicent<\/STRONG> per memo(sorry, <\/EM><\/FONT>Millicent<\/FONT><\/EM><\/A>)<\/FONT>. <\/P>
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Clustering on each end of this process can further reduce cost by another few orders of magnitude<\/A>.  Making use of something simple like a public electronic bulletin-board would allow each such titbit to be broadcast to thousands; similarly, gathering together similar sources of information to reduce {time, topic, audience flag} redundancy would allow a five-fold reduction in the number of broadcast titbits.  <\/P>
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Now, however, you must pay for hardware; half of your $60 bulletin board is replaced with a ten thousand dollar screen.  If a hundred clustered titbits are broadcast a day, a hundred thousand over 3 years, this means an extra twenty cents per tb, or an extra centicent per memo[= 5 tb] if two thousand people pause long enough during the day to scan the board.<\/P>
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Oops<\/FONT>.  Looks like we’ve actually upped<\/EM> the cost of transmission by a magnitude.  But now we’ve also taken care of contextualizing<\/STRONG> (clustering increases relevance, helps recipients compare similar events\/happenings\/announcements), dissemination<\/STRONG> (how did you get your list of interested parties in the first place?  were they able to tell they shouldn’t filter it into the trash? [this happens to me with a few messages<\/STRONG> a day that I<\/STRONG> honestly care about<\/STRONG>] etc…), and have le<\/FONT>ft the vagaries of displaying<\/STRONG> information in the central hands of experts.  Before, you were limited to the lowest common denominator of the display terminals of your recipients; but now you can access just about any high-resolution display format, if the display boards are well-designed (which extras you have on the order of $1k per display to pay for).<\/P>
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Good displays<\/STRONG> can provide another half magnitude of information density<\/STRONG>; good use of familiar logos can greatly increase scanning[reading] speed; more subtle interleaving and refreshing can improve on the transmission rate of 100 tb a day.  Each of these improvements makes the use of the system enjoyable, a more rewarding daily ritual — and we’re also back down to the microcent memo.  This means that reminding five hundred people twenty times each about a timely bit of information costs you around $1<\/STRONG>… after paying off middle-men, and accounting for the many people who won’t care about it in the first place.  <\/P>
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[of course the sources are now spending a bit more time dealing with clustering, but they will  welcome the excuse to stop padding one-fact messages.  When we have a true information-glut<\/STRONG> problem, our world will already have become a much richer<\/STRONG> place.<\/FONT>]<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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Once I do, have no fear, you’ll be the first<\/STRONG> to hear about it. <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Broadcasting timely \/ breaking information to those who care about it should be easy.  The absolute cost of broadcasting from one computer to another is under $1\/GB, even after amortizing the cost of the sending machine\/hardware and assuming moderate economies of scale.  This is on the order of a millicent per memo(sorry, Millicent).  Clustering on each end of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[213],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metrics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-8n","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

That’s about as much as it costs to have your secretary spend five minutes proofreading it and sending it off.  As for acquiring<\/STRONG> timely information and splitting it up into useful bits… I’m not yet sure how that works  I’d have to ask a news<\/A> channel<\/A>, calendar<\/A> maintainer, news<\/A> librarian<\/A>, or maybe even a high-speed<\/A> current<\/A> events commentator<\/A>.  <\/P>
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