This morning, as I was doing some research for microMARKETING I came across a great quote by a religion scholar named James P. Carse. The quote comes from his book Finite and Infinite Games, which served as inspiration for an early massively multiplayer online game called Game Neverending and, after that, a little online photo sharing service called Flickr (developed by the same company that created Game Neverending.)
While nothing could have been further from Carse's mind than media and marketing (he tends to focus on stuff of a, erm, higher order), I found that he could have just as easily been writing about the differences between old media vs new, old marketing vs new. And of course the differences between the scarce-choice-abundant-attention world in which mass marketing held sway and the infinite-choice-scarce-attention world in which microMARKETING makes a whole lot more sense. In fact, I liked it so much I worked it into the book.
OK Verdino (blah blah blah), so what's the quote? Funny you ask, good reader. I slapped together a quick graphic suitable for framing (or at least sharing with your fake online friends):
If you like it (or can't read it cuz the type in the embedded image is too tiny for your laptop-bleary eyes), you can download the original from (ahem) Flickr.
