271–280 of 312 posts
- Nancy Erlich, July 11 1971 New York Times (http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1971/07/11/9130...)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's such a pervasive notion, especially among techies and other white collar types, that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do, regardless of income. It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work. I believe Astra Taylor made an interesting point about…
I think you may have missed the core of the notion. It's not about who "deserves" what at all. It's about providing value. Techies and other white collar types generally provide value by doing bespoke work. Demanding payment to copy non-custom bits because they have a certain color is not providing value in any readily apparent way. What you've also missed is how sick and tired techies are of artists and musicians se…
In any event, I suspect that you don't know many "so-called artists". May you have a long and prosperous career, and retire young before the market value for your passions is reduced to zero.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's such a pervasive notion, especially among techies and other white collar types, that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do, regardless of income. It's a tremendous sense of entitlement on the one hand, to express contempt for the individual while expecting unlimited access to their work. I believe Astra Taylor made an interesting point about…
> that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you may have missed the core of the notion. It's not about who "deserves" what at all. It's about providing value. Techies and other white collar types generally provide value by doing bespoke work. Demanding payment to copy non-custom bits because they have a certain color is not providing value in any readily apparent way. What you've also missed is how sick and tired techies are of artists and musicians se…
Not at all. Rather, it's that your heuristic of "providing value" breaks down spectacularly in the face of even the most casual observations of consumer demand. Whether value is provided by copying bits is arguable, that artists add value to society is not even worth debating. Producing an album is bespoke labor as well, just work that, as such, typically goes uncompensated. And to the extent that these are merely sy…
An album in which an artist has key creative control is not bespoke labor. It's self-expression, a very different form of work. Software engineers generally perform bespoke, custom, specified labor for others who control what that labor looks like and produces. For this, said engineers are compensated for their time and labor. Said engineers do not generally expect to own the result, just as a portrait artist does not expect to own the commissioned piece.
May you have a long and prosperous career in which you fit your business model to the times in which you live. With luck, you'll even manage what the rest of us have - a way to profit from your passions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does tha…
It's funny how tech companies are making money from the distribution of this supposedly valueless content that the market supposedly has no demand for.
Though I'm certainly saddened to hear David Bowie has died, I think his death is absolutely off-topic for HN. Yet compare the number of points and comments this thread has with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10832624 or this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10557793 It seems like HN's content is becoming less and less technical over time and much more political and social, and this thread is a great…
Comparing the stories about Bowie, Naur, and Amdahl isn't valid. Their fame is of different orders of magnitude, even among a sophisticated technical audience.
Doesn't this quotation strongly apply to software engineers? I find engineers have more trouble applying the same logic to software engineering, while applying it to artists, especially musicians, without much reflection.
Do we all have to share this culture of mourning and condoleances? I have listened to some music made by David Bowie, but I kind of feel not that much about his death. Am I heartless? Or just honest? I mean, listening to some guy's music do not make it a close relative, is it? (If so, then well we all have too many "close relatives" for this mean anything anymore). Or should I just shut up and let the people weep unt…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that artists and musicians either don't deserve a good living or should be happy just to get to do what they do They don't; that's simply a fact, no one is owed or deserves a living, you have to work for it like everyone else. If there is demand for what you do, monetize it, if you can't, then pick another career because the market has spoken. You can't mandate that X career deserves to be paid, the market does tha…
It's funny how tech companies are making money from the distribution of this supposedly valueless content that the market supposedly has no demand for.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "50s to the 90s"--which is so laughably general, that's four generations of music, if not more--had The Beatles and David Bowie and it also had The Monkees and Men Without Hats. We have the artists who it's funny to make fun of, like Bieber, and we have Jack White, we have Kanye West, we have Radiohead--and we had David Bowie, he's a modern artist today , have you listened to Blackstar, which openly tips its cap…
> we have Kanye West For what it's worth Kanye West is still regarded like a sort of a joke in most of Europe, at least for people like me, who are over 30. > and we have Jack White At first I said to myself "who's that?", then I saw that he used to sing for the White Stripes. It's a so-and-so band, at least one of their songs got pretty popular among the football ultras, as did the Pet Shop Boys' "Go West!" back in…