Chevy Chase came up with one of the funniest important lines (and one of
the most important funny lines) of the past several decades, when he
condescendingly introduced his mock newscast on "Saturday Night Live"
with the greeting: "Hello, I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not." It's hard
to think of another statement that so neatly characterizes the power
that people extract from the roles they play: anchorman, CEO,
gatekeeper, auto mechanic, programmer, editor, teacher, clerk, cop.
("Hello, I'm the gatekeeper, and you're not. You may have an appointment
with His/Her Eminence a year from next October.") But now a humbled
Chevy Chase has been drummed out of television, because his late-night
talk show failed. Even Chevy Chase is not Chevy Chase anymore. I can
imagine how the poor man feels.
The reason I know how Chevy Chase feels about not being Chevy Chase is
that I myself have always felt bad about not being Chevy Chase. All
those people watching! Maybe even listening! But his talk show couldn't
get more than a million or so people to tune in, so he was put out with
the garbage.
A million or so people, and he's out with the trash!
Something funny's going on. The idea was supposed to be that there now
could be channels for everything: the surfing channel, the shopping
channel, the buffalo channel, the boredom channel. There could even be a
channel dedicated to Chevy Chase. So then why couldn't poor Chevy keep
his show on late-night television? A million people were watching him.
Isn't that enough?
Apparently not--anyway, not if you're paying the bills and you need to
maximize advertising revenue. So Chevy had to draw a bigger audience;
that's all there was to it.
But would it have been possible to take another approach--by lowering
the water rather than raising the bridge? What if we lowered the cost of
distributing Chevy? Maybe we could distribute him by e-mail over the
Internet. Of course, he couldn't really do his pratfalls satisfactorily
(until the technology evolves a bit more), but he could still do his
verbal stuff. Using the Internet, Chevy could slowly work himself back
into shape, like a boxer. He could be a contender again. What about it?
Well, I don't know, but I don't think so, because the issue isn't Chevy;
the issue is Chevy's fans. Take me, for example. I've always liked
Chevy, but I never had any interest in watching his talk show. That's no
reflection on Chevy, because I don't have much interest in anything. For
example, I don't even have that much interest in all that edifying stuff
in the Library of Congress, and I'm unlikely to take advantage of it.
You see, just like the military notion of "need to know," there's the
related and inalienable civilian notion of "couldn't care less." Oh,
sure, there are nights when I thrill to the thought that soon I'll be
able to download the entire contents of the Library of Congress onto my
workstation in sixteen seconds flat. But there are other nights when I'm
just too tired to want to read the entire contents of the Library of
Congress. I just want to hang out and read what other people are
reading. What they're reading is John Grisham. You don't need the
Library of Congress to read John Grisham. You need a Seven-Eleven.
As it happens, I haven't read John Grisham, but for the sake of
argument, let us suppose (probably correctly) that there are thousands
of books in the Library of Congress that are better written, more
interesting, more insightful, and more important than The Client or The
Firm. Who is reading them? Far fewer than the number of fans of Chevy
Chase's ill-fated talk show. Will the wonderful Gulliver's Travels
become a best-seller again when it's available for downloading? Well,
maybe a new multimedia version might (if Robin Williams plays Gulliver),
but I doubt that the text version will, unless it somehow gets an amount
of hype equal to the amount spent on the books, movies, and sporting
events now receiving their fifteen minutes of fame.
In other words, beyond the critical issues of technology and access are
the critical issues of promotion and support. The Andy Warhol "fifteen
minutes of fame" prediction has relevance not only to celebrities but to
things celebrated: movies, books, operating systems, styles of
organization, technology plans, strategies for innovation, policies for
education, and Men's Fall Fashions.
Technology and equitable access to technology are necessary conditions
for effective, sustained communication in the modern world, but they are
not sufficient conditions. Therefore, people who care about improving
education through technology need to care about three things (not just
two): (1) technological infrastructure, (2) quality of content, and (3)
effective promotion and support (dare I use words like "marketing" or
"leadership"?).
Of course, the "All Three" rule applies only to education, not to
entertainment. With entertainment, you need to spend your money on hype;
then, if you have any money left, you need to spend it on technology; if
you still have any money left over, you need to spend it on quality and
content (if, incredibly, you know what those words mean). But we're
speaking now of education. If the third concern (promotion and support)
is given inadequate attention, technology's contribution to education
will be entirely irrelevant.
Let me say it again: I'm talking about education rather than
entertainment. In the case of entertainment, only hype and technology
are necessary, except, apparently, in the case of poor Chevy Chase, for
whom hype and technology were not enough. Which is too bad, because
Chevy's a very bright and funny guy.
At least that's what I think. I'd ask you what you think, but, hey, if
I'm not Chevy Chase, neither are you.