Recentralization of Content

The internet decentralized content, and that was a fantastic positive. But with radical decentralization comes the growing impossibility of finding anything of quality.

It's one thing if you know what you're looking for--say recent political polls. That's intangible content and fairly easy to tag, catagorize, etc. Intangible content is highly mediated and so lends itself to being organized under existing brands such as newspapers, bloggers and the like.

But looking for something you don't know you want--like new songs, or creative writing is a much more daunting task. This is untangible content, and it doesn't matter if two short stories are both tagged Appalachia and Mining (or whatever)--the key differences between then are indescribable. The content is often unmediated in direct relation to its quality. (A new unheard song by an unheard artist that would become your favorite song being worth more than a new unheard song that would become your favorite by an already known artist.)

Attempts to mediate this process--like Pandora or Platinum Blue--are inefficient because they can deliver results similar only to our previous choices--they cannot allow for recent changes in taste and growth. They can introduce us to more of the same, but ignore the most important part of untangible quality--novelty. Breaking the mold.

If content is really good--of excellent quality--any brand above it, such as a literary magazine, will detract from it, not add. (Not to mention that an entirely new kind of story might appeal more to an audience than a magazine built on past success. The street changes and grows more easily and rapidly than any institution or business.) Hemingway is more important than any magazine in which he was published, though it is rare that a political columnist transcends The New York Times.

But typing "the new big thing" into Google yields nothing but jibberish.

Recognizing these pitfalls of decentralization, people are setting up alternatives to Google in an attempt to provide more relevant results, these attempts will continue until people realize the value of floating prices (and likely after). These are boutique search engines--attempts to re-centralize, or impose hierarchy on, the decentralized mess.

These search engines will be useful for free content, but will not provide as valuable an experience as floating prices could. This is what the market is learning. Pop-ups are entirely useless way to monetize content because they take from the consumer but don't give. Prices take but also give valuable information--they allow the consumer to make very complex choices very efficiently--so if you like hand crafted selvage blue jeans you don't have to start your search at Wal*Mart.

All content searches start at Wal*Mart. They then go to Target, Sears, Payless, Penny's, and TJ Maxx. Then they go to Wards, Old Navy... You get the point, they don't even get to Barneys' for the first ten minutes. If you prefer Saks, that's another five minutes. If you like upscale, bespoke designers with immaculate production values--real craftspeople making real quality--and have a geographical preference like local, then the free, decentralized internet is almost useless.

If you like the same kind of care and attention, novelty and bleeding edge values in your art, and are looking for someone you've never heard of, you're better off driving across town and asking someone. If it doesn't exist in your town--that is if it's truly rare--you may never know until it gets mediated. If you're an artist looking for inspiration, this is too late. You've already missed the boat.

Prices contain so much more information than any other tag or blurb. And they do so in such an elegant and compact manner that they are irreplaceable--just ask the Soviets.

The market is about communication and will always be arbitrarily inefficient and unnecessarily unclear without price information. In many cases, how many clicks something gets matters much less than even a ballpark idea of how much each consumer would be willing to pay for that click. Free isn't always better (or even nice) in the same way that welfare isn't always better than a job. Sooner or later the content sector will be forced to reckon with this immutable fact. White Gold is a hedge fund betting everything on this eventuality.

And it stands to profit fantastically. Though a majority of the gains will go to consumers and producers in the form of more efficient, more clear and more valuable markets, cultures and societies.