The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
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Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#2I largely agree. The only thing that will remain constant is that the news today is absolutely terrible since it's trying to become entertainment and not what it should be: news.
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#3I feel like 200 years from now, our times will be viewed as something akin to the industrial revolution. Recency bias makes us feel as if we're more important in history, but 200 years is a long time. I'm sure there'll be another "revolution" or two in that time. And the people of that time will probably consider it to be the most pivotal revolution yet.
History folks. It repeats itself.
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#4You only have to spend a little time consuming digital media to understand that products that rely on advertisements for income suck. As soon as subscription services started offering ad-free versions of their product, I started buying them.
I'm not saying it's the best way forward, but would it kill Twitter and Facebook and Snap to experiment with some of these models? It's working for content creators, why should social media platforms be any different?
At the very least, it makes sense to offer paid tiers of access for their APIs, which I get some of their "enterprise" clients are already doing, but certainly a great API is monetizable and worth paying for.
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#5I feel like 200 years from now, our times will be viewed as something akin to the industrial revolution. Recency bias makes us feel as if we're more important in history, but 200 years is a long time. I'm sure there'll be another "revolution" or two in that time. And the people of that time will probably consider it to be the most pivotal revolution yet. History folks. It repeats itself.
It shouldn't take that long... it's apparent today just how obvious the parallels are. Most people actively, intentionally do not think about it, which I suppose answers the questions of, "How could the Victorians have done that?!" History repeats because the collective human memory is short, and the average person is unaware of their own history.
It's not a game we can play forever though... the toys are much bigger now and globally impactful. If we can't figure this shit out before we run out of resources or spoil the planet for our civilization (or just nuke ourselves) we are done as an advanced society.
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#6"Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meine Browning!"
Terrible play, questionable subject matter and worse fans, but still... a good point. There's nothing wrong with culture as a concept to live through, but as a point of discussion it's akin to a discussion of religion or dreams.
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#7[deleted]
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#8The way I've come to view culture is that it is a byproduct of communication. Stick three people in a room and have them talk to each other, eventually they come to share a culture (a small one, but nonetheless significant to them)[1]. If it's indeed a byproduct, it follows that the amount of culture generated is directly proportional to the bandwidth/speed of that communication.
In that interpretation, the internet can only be an accelerating force; driving society forward into greater levels of social consciousness.
[1]: A relevant XKCD comes to mind https://xkcd.com/915/
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#9tldr; We've all become patrons of the arts through micro-transactions.
Ten years ago, I donated regularly to charities that would enable micro-funding for people living in third-world countries. A $10 donation would buy some chickens for a woman in South America, who could turn a profit on the eggs and eventually pay the loan back. I thought it was a fantastic idea.
Today, I find I'm funding everyone's projects. I pay a $2/month for a serialized zombie radio drama I listen to on my morning run. $4/month contributes to one of my favorite weekly science podcasts. $4/month to Amazon gets me unlimited streaming music on my Alexa. I think nothing of paying $3 for a phone app I might play once or twice before getting distracted by the next shining new thing.
Culturally, even without this micro-funding, we are swamped in culture. My DeviantArt feed overwhelms me with more amazing art than I have time to appreciate. The same is true of books, shows and films both professionally-made and independent. As a result we are drowning in culture, but dividing into micro-cultures as individual. Twenty years ago, everyone had the common cultural experiences of watching the same shows and movies. Today, we no longer can take those common-cultural references for granted. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just an observation.
Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It
#10The way I've come to view culture is that it is a byproduct of communication. Stick three people in a room and have them talk to each other, eventually they come to share a culture (a small one, but nonetheless significant to them)[1]. If it's indeed a byproduct, it follows that the amount of culture generated is directly proportional to the bandwidth/speed of that communication. In that interpretation, the internet…
>If it's indeed a byproduct, it follows that the amount of culture generated is directly proportional to the bandwidth/speed of that communication.
I agree that the mediums of communication of a society have a significant effect on the culture the users, but is "culture" something that can really be objectively quantified?
Perhaps it may be more accurate to say that the speed in which a culture lives is related to the speed of communication.