the Onda

Just came back from D6, the conference that Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher, and the rest of the Dow Jones staff put on for the tech elite. While not as awesome as past Ds have been, D6 was still head and shoulders above almost anything else on the conference circuit. Though it was weird how both Apple and Google were noticeably absent from the official program (though most speakers brought both companies up several times), and the Yahoo-Microsoft thing got far too much airtime, there were some real standout speakers— chief among them Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of Dow Jones who all but endorsed Obama and condemned the Alaskan elk within 5 minutes, and Melinda Gates, who was the perfect model of what large-scale modern philanthropy should be.

For me the best part about D is never rubbing shoulders with the titans of industry (I never know what to say), but the thought-provoking interview style sessions that Walt and Kara are able to bring to the stage. This year's thought-provoking highlight was Jeff Bezos talking about the Kindle, especially in contrast to all of the other media execs.

The Kindle, Bezos told the crowd, was built around the notion that long-form reading is actually incredibly valuable and therefore something that we need to shepherd into the digital age. He was very clear on this fact: books provide a different kind of intellectual engagement that all of these quick-hit blog posts/emails/tweets/etc., and as such we need to make sure that they find their footing and are able to flourish in the era of ubiquitous networks, many screens, and constant interruptions. He said that he thought it might take a decade to perfect, and that it was a big bet— but that Amazon was ready to sign up for it.

Contrast this position to Barry Diller, Howard Stringer, and the countless other media tycoons who spent their time on stage talking about how they were going to continue to slice and dice their content to fit smaller and smaller chunks of it on more devices and more networks. The term "webisode" (which I hate) came up several times as some sort of a bastardization of a television episode that is meant for consumption on a YouTube like experience.

This inexorable drive to cut content down to fill every last chunk of white space in the day is something that I am not sure is entirely a good thing. Witness the conference itself: I was as guilty as about 90% of the crowd in filling up the less engaging bits of sessions with iPhone browsing and emailing. In short we seem to be willing to lose our ability to focus, trading it against the adrenaline-induced high of constant content consumption. In this light, Bezos's fight on behalf of long-form content seems like one worth taking on.

In an ironic twist, part of the schwag given to use by the sponsors and partners of D included a fast-paced and funny novel called Hooked by Matt Richtel, which I happened to read on the way home. It is centered in the tech industry and Silicon Valley, and well worth the read. Without giving too much away, I will mention that the central twist is rooted in this very debate about attention, focus, and the crack that is constant content consumption.

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