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Musings Report #51 12-20-14 Is the Web Destroying the Cultural Economy?
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Is the Web Destroying the Cultural Economy?
My long-time friend G.F.B. recently sent me this 13-minute Interview with Andrew Keen. This is my first exposure to Keen, and his view that the democratization of the Web is great for politics but a disaster for what he calls the Cultural Economy--the relatively small but important slice of the economy that pays creators and artists to make culture: music, literature, art and serious journalism.
The title of Keen's 2007 book encapsulates his dire perspective: The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values.
His 2012 book is titled DIGITAL VERTIGO: How Today's Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing and Disorienting Us.
Keen touches on a great many ideas and themes in this brief interview, but his core point is this: by enabling everyone to express themselves on an essentially equal footing, the Web has undermined legitimate journalism and buried the talented few in an avalanche of mediocrity--in his words, talent is "lost in a sea of garbage."
By eliminating the middleman who added value by sorting the wheat from the chaff--the film studio, the music labels, the publishers--the Web has created a cultural landscape where "soft, ordinary" content such as cute cat videos garner the most "likes" and clicks--the digital world's metric for popularity and thus value in the marketplace.
Keen tossed off one of his most interesting ideas as an aside: that the break-up of community and the resulting losss of identity has generated a universal drive to establish an identity via self-expression: everybody feels they can compose a song, write a novel or make a movie.
Keen is at his most provocative (to the democratized ideal of the amateur making it big) when he declares the vast majority of people are talentless: talent is by definition scarce. We can't all be equally talented, nor can anyone generate culturally valuable content without mastering their craft over thousands of hours of practice.
Keen unapologetically calls the previous arrangement an "industrial meritocracy." He feels this hierarchical meritocracy is being destroyed and there is nothing to replace it. This will result in a cultural Dark Age where the talented cannot earn a living creating culture. The only avenue left for creators of content that can be copied and distributed digitally (music, digital art, writing) is to find wealthy patrons to support their work.
One of G.F.B.'s points in our conversation was the Web's "level playing field" is an artificial construct, much like the playing field in a stadium is level. But outside the stadium, the geography is anything but level. Put other way, global corporations have great advantages in the supposedly "level playing field" of the Web.
Keen mentions that what will remain scarce in this tsunami of digital content is access to the artist, live performances and art that cannot be digitized, such as sculpture and paintings. As I have discussed in previous Musings, musicians who perform constantly can make a living in this environment, because their free music on the web builds an audience for their live performances. But not every band performs enough to make a go of this model.
In Keen's view, it is now essentially impossible for bands, artists and writers to create a "brand" that will generate an income. Only those creators who entered the digital age with an established brand can leverage their recognition into an income.
As a completely marginal creator of content who never rose within the industrial meritocracy lauded by Keen, I think Keen makes some excellent points but overstates his case for a cultural Dark Age.
As G.F.B. pointed out in our conversation on this topic, a new class of curators is arising within the Web, people who sift through the vast outpouring of content and select the best or most interesting (in their view). Those curators who succeed are adding value just as the industrial middlemen did in the pre-digital model. In some small way, I think Of Two Minds performs a bit of this curation.
I think it's instructive to consider the example of Andrew Sullivan, who once edited The New Republic magazine, and TNR itself. The magazine is shrinking to 10 issues a year, a shadow of his former weekly print glory, while Sullivan has carved out a profitable niche as media pundit with a large subscription base.
It seems to me that the digital age requires every creator of content to not only be perseverant but to focus a great deal of time and energy on marketing their content--precisely what the industrial media and cultural industrial-model companies once did for their talent.
There is no longer enough money in creating content to pay an office full of people to issue press releases and arrange book tours. In the publishing world, promotion is icnreasingly up to the authors; as Keen noted, only those authors with brands that were established in the pre-digital age can sell enough content to support industrial-type promotion.
We can bemoan this, or we can grasp the nettle and realize that it is no longer enough to practice one's craft for the fabled 10,000 hours--one must also invest another 10,000 hours in promoting and marketing one's content/cultural creations. That dual process (creation and marketing) is so arduous, so impoverishing, so demanding, only the driven few can sustain it long enough to claw their way through the mountain of mediocrity.
Making a living at cultural content was always Darwinian; all that's changed is the nature of the Darwinian selection process.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
What Will It Take to Be a Superpower in 2025? 12/19/14
What Is the Gold-Oil Ratio Telling Us? 12/18/14
Here's What's Wrong with Corporate America--and the U.S. Economy 12/17/14
The Great Generic Drug Rip-Off 12/16/14
What Choice Do We Have? 12/15/14
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Our family gathers before Christmas for a small celebratory party. This year, my Mom assembled photos into personalized 2015 calendars with her Apple Mac. The personalized photo calendars are a utilitarian gift that allows us all to relive fun times.
Market Musings: Is this a healthy rally or a manic blow-off rally?
I've marked up a few charts to explore the question: is the 3-day 100-point rally in the S&P 500 a sign of a healthy market or is it a sign of a manic blow-off phase that marks the top of the 6-year bull market?
Let's look at the Russell 2000 (RUT). The weekly chart has a year-long consolidation phase, where the RUT has gone nowhere since early 2014. This could be viewed as setting the stage for another rally, or as a topping process that's coming to an end. Few rallies last longer than 6 years, so history is skeptical of the notion that there's another 2-3 years of Bull left to run.
The daily chart has huge gaps below that are begging to get filled. Open gaps are not signs of a healthy advance, as they get filled, generally sooner rather than later.
One analyst claims the stock market operates on a
64-Month Pattern, with the additional caveat that some tops stretch out for 5 months, with the final top being Month 69.
February 2015 is Month 69 by his reckoning.
Both of these views--that the market is poised to roll over hard, or it will run for many months or even years--can't be right. One will be more right than the other. At this point all we can do is be alert to both possibilities and be nimble as evidence of one or the other comes in.
From Left Field
As Robots Grow Smarter, American Workers Struggle to Keep Up
Humans Need Not Apply (15 min. video) -- overview of the robotic revolution...
Meet Amelia: the computer that's after your job
The Economics Of Efficiency: Fake Jobs, Fake Growth, And A Two Class Society
Fantastic photography from Philipp Scholz Rittermann of China’s industrial landscapes (via Maoxian)
Rain Rain Beautiful Rain - Ladysmith Black Mambazo (2:29) (via David H.)
Homegrown Revolution - The Urban Homestead (Award winning short-film 2009; 15 min) (via Steven W.)
Epic Bot Fraud: Up To 50% Of All Publisher Traffic Is From Fake Clicks; Billions In Ad Revenue At Risk
The Road to Turkdom -- open source "tribes" and industrial-production bots (via Lew G.)
Chile’s Plantation Economy -- the neoliberal miracle....
A Billion Dollar Company With No Bosses? Yes, It Exists (via Lew G.) The Valve Corporation's former economist-in-residence explained how a trendsetter in the video game industry can function without management.
The Downside of Eating Too Locally (via Joel M.) -- thoughtful exploration of supporting distant small farmers...
"Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true." (Franz Kafka)
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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