Media, Hot & Cool - Chapter I

In our news series "Mise en abyme" we present propositions on notorious expressions that have seen wide spread usage in recent years. Feel welcome to condemn, blame, retrieve, praise, defend, obsolete or whatever you and your mind is triggered to.

Proposition: If you have no good conception of Media, hot & cool, you can at most understand half of the entangled set of movers or reasons that have led to the relative amount of success of youtube and the relative lack of success of HD television and radio in the last 7 to 8 and 20 years respectively.

Proof: Not worked out well enough yet

Corollary; The order of relative success of youtube can compute in 2 different ways. The easy way is to state that youtube has around 40 per 100 share in the developed western internet video markets. Every single of its competitors has under 10 per 100. The more difficult assesment is the share youtube has as opposed to real TV and its more related forms. It seems, internet video, in terms of quantities consumed has grown to anything between 1 and 2 per 100 of overall moving pictures view time in the same developed western markets. Sans pocket calculator we can estimate a market share of an order of magnitude of 0,5 per 100 for the different Northern American and European markets. With the largest competitors at 14 (Germany) to 20 (UK) per 100 in developed competitive markets, we can start to talk about youtube's relative success. Considered, that traditional TV, conceived as a form of distribution is largely a national affair still and youtube is a thoroughly international affair, next to facebook it is a media force to probably recon with, somehow.

Allthough more than a half of the US households own HDTV sets and the number of HD television channels has grown to more than 700 in Europe this year, the market share of HD Television viewed is well under earlier expectations of many so called analysts. The difficulty of retrieving hard figures on the web alone should tell us enough.

Mise en abîme

Zum Metaphysiker wird in der Geschichte des Szientivismus leicht einer dem Nächsten. Durkheim selbst erging es nicht anders; seine Lehre vom Kollektivbewusstsein, vollends der outrierte Enthusiasmus, mit dem er auf dessen Seite sich schlug, waren ungeschützt gegen Angriffe desselben Typus wie der seine auf den Fortschrittsbegriff. Das Kollektiv mit Fähigkeiten und Funktionen auszustatten, die offensichtlich vom einzelmenschlichen Individuum abstrahiert sind, und sie dann als diesem vorgängig zu setzen, ist für den unreflektierten Menschenverstand nicht weniger provozierend als die Kategorie Fortschritt, die an der Entfaltung von Rationalität ihre mächtige Stütze hat. Th.W.Wiesengrund in einer J.H. gewidmeten Einleitung zu Emil Durkheims "Soziologie und Philosophie", suhrkamp 1970