The obvious is shouted, the interesting is whispered

Perhaps it was always this way, and it is only with time that I see it.

Or perhaps our media is less interesting, more controlled, than it once was.

The obvious is shouted a thousand times an hour. The interesting is whispered in closed doors.

This morning, for example, I wrote ...

Gordon's Notes: The iPhone iAd framework and parental controls

... iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) come with parental controls. Android OS, interestingly, does not ...

...  iOS comes with FairPlay DRM (digital rights management), Android OS lacks a DRM standard. Even Gruber, a giant of fan blogs, does not seem to get this. FairPlay is worth billions to the iOS App market...

This is a small thing, in a technical domain, but it is not hard to discover. It is not a matter of opinion. Any reasonable person who thinks about it for a moment will agree - yes, the way FairPlay DRM manages iOS apps is extraordinarily important to Apple's revenue stream.

Yet this goes unspoken. Unspoken, that is, in the media. I am sure it is discussed at Google and Apple.

I've written before about dogs that don't bark in the night. These silences speak volumes. In my blog I now tag them as unspoken.

Why are some important and obvious things unspoken?

Sometimes it is because people with power understand, often wisely, that the less said the better. China's rare earth embargo is an example.

Sometimes it is because some things aren't obvious until they are spoken. Not just spoken in an eccentric blog with an unusual readership, but spoken in a bigger platform. These silences end in time.

Most often though, I think it is because most struggles are bipolar, and neither of the two parties wants to introduce a meme that might disturb both. Perhaps, as happens in American politics, there is something both parties agree should happen, but one party wishes to maintain an illusion of total opposition. Perhaps the unspoken fact might introduce a disruptive third position, and both parties prefer the enemy they know.

These days, when I write in this blog, I try to write about things are not spoken. My Reader Share, and its secondary (inferior) twitter stream, are for interesting things that are shouted.