[SCC_Active_Members] Book: The Long Tail

[Tim Shoppa]

Heard an interview with Chris Anderson, author of a new book called
_The Long Tail_, today. Went out and bought the book and am attempting
to digest it.

The book's title refers to the shape of a distribution curve in a
marketplace: the most popular items sell (of course) the most, but
changes in distribution (and the introduction of the internet) make
it possible/easier to get at the less popular varieties of things
today. It's all these lesser-known varieties that form the "long
tail" of the title, and in many cases the area underneath the long
tail can actually be bigger than the area in the big hump.

An example taken out in the book is the 19th century cigar
industry: Over 10,000 varietes of cigars were available in
the 19th century. 

My gut feeling is that the "garage industry" nature of the
computer industry for several decades (50's, 60's, 70's, 80's)
is not too different than the 10,000 varieties of cigars.

I'm not saying that it's important to collect all 10,000 varieties
of cigars, but it is important to acknowledge the breadth and
variety of diverse garage industries.

Just like software, I'm sure some of the cigar varieties were
remarkably crappy clones of others :-).

There's some attempt to both rationalize and deconstruct the
concept of 20th century mass consumerism, where a half-dozen
brands with a half-dozen varieties populated the store shelves,
and lesser known brands and varieties were neglected (but available
with some difficulty). An argument is made that the internet flattens
ease of distribution for everything, so that it is now just as easy
to get the lesser known stuff. And there is also some discussion
about difficultines in being faced with an overwhelming variety of choices.

Seems somehow relevant to the issue of collecting the "top 20" of
computer software vs collecting (or at least loosely associating)
a collection of everything including the lesser known stuff. While
the technology flattens the availability of everything, I'm not
so sure that it flattens curation (in terms of a museum) efforts,
especially efforts in the fledgling stage.

Tim.