If you drop a book into the toilet, you can fish it out, dry it off and read that book. But if you drop your Kindle in the toilet, you’re pretty well done.
— Stephen King, American author
IN the middle of a pitch to the board of a prominent government agency tasked with spearheading Malaysia to the world, I said something that made me go ‘hmmm, I am going to use this line again and again. Here is a gist of what I said. Whatever is rare is considered luxury and privileged.
Which is why there is such a price tag on diamonds — because they are rare and hard to find. And it takes a whole lot of work to break away the layers and create that final sparkle, cut and finesse that people pay premium price for. In an era of digitalisation today, print is the new diamond and has once again come back a full circle to be a luxury item. To have and to hold. To flip and read.
To take with you and pass out to friends and clients. Print is regulated. You have bodies that ensure you cannot just print anything and pass it around; you are under strict pressure to quote resources and ensure no plagiarism has taken place before you put your words into print and then get it published.
Thereby when you curate specific content and ensure you have a vast reach to the right target audience, it becomes more than a luxury. It becomes a privileged gift to the select few who deserve to get that gift.
Which is why when all publications are going online so they reduce cost of printing and distribution, we are now taking the brave step to create, for the first time ever, a regional publication, created and printed here in Malaysia and distributed to corporate and government decision makers around Southeast Asia.
Creating a platform that connects all the who’s who in Southeast Asia together, enabling businesses to talk directly to decision makers by positioning themselves on that regional platform. All print. Supported by a digital platform like Voice of Asean. We believe it will be a game changer.
As someone from the world of public relations and media, I am the first to identify the dangers of narratives being controlled by a select few. And that is what has been happening with social media giants like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn which have basically replaced books and local newspapers as reading material. It’s exciting and interesting to hear views and opinions from all over the world, but they can also censor you if what you say does not comply with whatever is in their interests to promote.
Many of the largest companies basically merge into one at the very top. So, the trend of what you read in these social media are very much controlled and curated to elicit a certain kind of sentiment or reaction based on what their global owners want. We no longer know what truth is and where the lie is.
The demand for how many likes and followers you get seems more important than whether the platform creates sheer rubbish or brilliant substance. People are now trained like Pavlov’s Dog to salivate at the highest number of followers instead of the most intelligently created, substantial matters. It is an era of ridiculous appeasement.
The sillier and more anal a platform becomes, it attracts the most followers from the lowest denominating factors. Sadly, the world is no longer a discerning one. What we need is a diversity of narratives formed in different emerging markets that maintain and keep our own narratives so that our future generations do not think like Americans in TV shows or follow weird fetishes they watch again and again in western owned social media.
And while I am at the topic of print, let’s keep cash too. A total Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) push is absolutely dangerous.
A CBDC system takes away every sense of your autonomy over your own money and you are now property of the government and thereby property of whoever lobbies hardest with your government. Every transaction you do is tracked, and your money can be digitally removed and held at ransom, if you don’t agree to something or other. Just like social media, where you are continuously tracked and the data you input to join quizzes in Facebook or all what you buy in Google can now be facilitated via Facebook is used to know you more thoroughly and target you like a stalker to sell you more things. All the giant social media companies are connected at the top, so they are all just essentially one giant social media company keeping track of us. When you are tracked in every which way, are you even free? So, there are still little luxuries left in the world, owning and reading a book is one of them. And supporting private businesses that seek to craft home grown narratives should be a national interest.
he views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
