The Cult of Me: An Introduction to the Term

Posted on | July 1, 2009 | View Comments

I’ve been sifting through the first few chapters of The Cult of Me, trying to lay the groundwork in the beginning of the book for the argument that comes later. I realized something in this process: I’ve talked about The Cult of Me without ever defining it. Really.

There are hints about it, but nothing concrete. Nothing that you can walk away with and go “that’s The Cult of Me.” So I’m going to start working that out. Here.

***

The Cult of Me is, at its heart, an idea about how we create and share stories that has, I think, tributaries that flow off other systems.

The simplest way to think of this idea is as an Internet router, a node along with information flows — in and out — along a continuum. Routers are, for the most part, traffic cops that merely take a piece of information that shows up, reads the basic directions and passes it along towards the next most logical router along the packet’s destination road. These routers are hubs, gathering small bits of information but never taking the time to assemble the entire message. They read just enough to “see” where the packet needs to go. Then they shepherd it along.

In this Cult of Me world, people do this type of information gathering through places like RSS aggregators (e.g. Google Reader), where they gathering many stories published on websites into one place so they can consume large quantities of information easily. Increasingly, we’re seeing “real time” aggregation through Twitter and Friendfeed, where friends pass along news items they find interesting. It’s a much less targeted aggregation system (because you are relying on a network of people instead of choosing your own stories), but it’s more social.

Which brings us to another element of The Cult of Me, the supernode, a term Netizens use to describe individuals who are able to mass large numbers of people into one place through their actions online. Traditionally (and still) mass media provides this same type of opportunity: think Oprah. The eponymous talk show host and media entity can move large numbers of people with her words because of network effects.

Soon there will be Netizens who reach that level as well, the inaccessible and celebrity-driven supernode who turns the two-way medium into a one-way street; however, for now, supernodes online — the sustainable ones — are largely those who interact with the community they have built.

So if we begin to characterize what The Cult of Me is, we see there is a combination to search, gather and interact with information on your own and then, for some, they regurgitate their thoughts around this gathered information to create two-way clusters, places where information is then remixed and sent back out into the world.

Again, this sounds a bit like a more democratized cable news network. And so far that’s not too far off (although the two-way nature of the dialogue does make this different in some ways).

To accomplish these goals, though, people need software tools, “agents” as Internet grandfather JCR Licklider referred to them in his paper “Man-Computer Symbiosis”.

One of the distinguishing aspects of The Cult of Me is that anyone can use software tools to publish into, aggregate and remix out into the “data stream”, adding their voice and perspective to the information that exists. This can be used by individuals (think blogs and text messages, which are one-to-many) or by groups who want to aggregate many thoughts (think gathering photos, videos, blogs and Tweets on one topic and stored in one place) or by individuals and groups who both comment, aggregate and then create new content around what others have done.

What we begin to see emerge then isn’t a linear story at all but a stream of data that flows across the Internet (and wireless networks) and plucked out at various places, aggregated and sent back out into the world to be recycled in new ways.

What this means is that the “digital publishing tools” so hailed today as game-changing, are in fact the least interesting components of this new storytelling medium. Blogs are smaller versions of newspapers; podcasts are smaller versions of radio; video weblogs are smaller versions of television.

They are one-to-many media. Sure, commenting can happen but you could also write to your local editor or call into your local radio and television station. The only thing different about these three tools is an order of magnitude for quick reply (but try commenting on a “popular blog” and see how quickly the response comes).

The innovation isn’t in the traditional model of replication (blog, podcast and webcast tools), it’s in the remixing and conversation and aggregation of multiple stories on one topic.

Which hopefully expresses the absolute importance of all SIX forms of media, but that completely lack of necessity that we have for any ONE of them. This is analogous to the cable television revolution in the 1970s and 1980s, when companies rushed to stake claim to as many channels as possible, knowing the pie — while not shrinking — was going to be split and divide amongst more guests.

The revolutionary aspect of The Cult of Me is looking at stories not as bits of information, but as three distinct areas: data, information and presentation.

The data is the raw bits of the stories (e.g. names, addresses, numbers, facts, figures, geo-location, time stamp, ect) that we can use to map, target, send, visualize, aggregate, track. The things that computers do better than we do.

The information is what we do with it. In the case of storytellers, that means assembling stories. But for engines like Wolfram Alpha, it means providing context or other helpful “story” components to data. Whether it’s humans or computers, though, that information should be assembled into a way that gives context.

The presentation comes from conversation, discussion and remixing. It’s here where people need to have their own tools for pulling information out of the data, discussing it and sending it back into the stream so that it can continually go through the wash, rinse and repeat cycle.

As we expand on these concepts throughout the book, we’ll be discussing some of the specific areas where bits and pieces of this are being done. To expound on these ideas in ways that will hopefully flesh out the problems with The Cult of Me and the challenges for aspects of this, such as archiving a truly distributed story.

Which brings us to the crux of The Cult of Me: the distributed story. What I’ve described so far is a new way to tell stories, one that acts as Licklider first described the Internet: a stream. The concept of a “stream” story comes and goes in vogue, with people variously claiming to have invented the idea.

That won’t happen here. I first came across it from Licklider in papers he wrote in the 1960s. I guess if there are those that pre-date him, I remixed the idea from a second-hand source. But it sure didn’t pop up afterwards.

What is new about this idea is attaching this river analogy to storytelling as a whole. That concept has been bandied around since the 1970s, in game worlds, online networks and into the Web era.

But the technology is only now getting to the point where we have enough publication, aggregation and mobile tools, where we have enough bandwidth to replicate and share text, audio and video across the networks and where we have a critical mass of people participating across these networks to create a truly flowing stream of data for a large number of events.

We no longer rely on one person (or one entity) to gather data, build stories and create the presentation for us. We can — and are — participating in the process (not usurping it).

From that comes a way for us to become our own media, become a supernode media, participate in a supernode media, participate in adding to the river of data or information. We become, very much, a Cult of Me, creating and building our own flock the way that we choose, depending on our desire to participate and our goal in participating.

***

Obviously this is a draft — and it’s an incomplete thought — but it’s the basic groundwork for the introduction of the book. More to come.

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