There's a familiar story about a mouse hitting a button, maybe red, to get dosed with cocaine. It does so, consistently, in preference to food and sex.

I prefer to think of the button as being a mouse button. And instead of cocaine, there's the Internet. Some mice have a simple mouse manufactured by an elitist fruit company, but the vast majority of mice have a Swiss knife of a mouse. It's got a minimum of 3 buttons, and one of them scrolls content up and down on a receptacle that, no matter how large, always seems too small. In fact, if there was a way to crawl into the receptacle I imagine the problem with these mice would be short-lived.

But that's the Internet. Publishers are driven through by the number of clicks their content gets and - sometimes - even the quality of the clicks if that makes any sense. Thus, publishers typically cut their content into smaller pieces so that the mice have to click through more links to get their doses of content. Each click is some revenue for the publisher. Click. Click. Click. And the majority of the mice, even hearing the urban legend of how they are just revenue streams for publishers, continue to click no matter the quality or quantity of the content. Click. Click. Click.

We exist in between. In Tibetan, Bardo thodol.

In the pre-Internet era - which is still the reality for more than 75% of the planet - the way things sold were by 'Hits'. By having hits, various industries thrived - from music's gold and platinum albums to Hollywood's blockbusters to the Volkswagen. Companies became focused on what appealed to as many people as possible, and in doing so they started defining what was appealing. There was a time, for instance, when music lyrics were technical jabs and uppercuts at 'the establishment', and where things posing as art weren't to be found at the local Target.

And this worked for companies around the world for quite a while.

But the Internet tore down the hit system. Why? Because geographically disparate people with similar likes can now connect and support businesses that support what they like. Where a business could not succeed before because of lack of interest in a geocentric sense, it can fumble into a niche and do well. But this isn't everywhere because the vast majority on the planet still don't have access. It's this grey area that's befuddling the majority of analysts that live between black and white lines defined by the 'Hits' system.

What this all means, really, is that we can be ourselves. We can find the things we like and get them. But, as a society, we're not used to being ourselves. It's like a weak muscle that isn't exercised. This, too, befuddles the majority of analysts and commentators.

While I've been reading We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, I've had to take breaks to ponder some things before I write a book review. This post really isn't about the book, instead it is about what I've been considering. Honestly, I haven't thought that much about it. I typically write what I see or think, I sometimes write about other people but most of the time decide not to as to be credible I would want to quote. People, despite what social networking folk seem to think, enjoy their privacy.

I've mistakenly thought that the 'Freedom of the Press', as noted in the United States, was consistent - the book demonstrates that this is not the case and even lead me to ponder why it is that 'the press' has more rights than the average person on the planet. For example, why is it that sometimes a journalist can get away with not divulging sources but the average person is more likely to be held in contempt of a Court for the same. It makes little sense to me, and while the author of the book took me down his own (thorough) chain of thought, I'm still wondering why it is that the media was even given rights - poorly defined rights - in the Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.