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The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

nytimes.com

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Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#21

Post by randomgyatwork »

padobson wrote: post #4

You 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 s…

Facebook, Twitter, Snap should be co-operatives of some sort, the users are creating the value, at least the popular ones, so they should be rewarded within the system for their continued support and audience development.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#22

Post by xemoka »

ska wrote: post #12
relics443 wrote: post #3

I 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.

So we've got the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, then the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. I can't think of any other separate event of equal impact. And you are suggesting that no only are we currently within a similar scale event (plausible, but hardly proven), and there will another two such magnitude events in the next 200 years? Or are you noting that we, and future generations, will al…

The Islamic Golden Age, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment could probably (at their times) be considered quite important as well, I'm sure there are many more examples of these kinds of 'revolutions' or 'key milestones'. Perhaps not as impactful as the agricultural or industrial revolution, but we don't have distance from the time to determine if our current milestone will be either.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#23

Post by tannhaeuser »

I'm not even sure we'll be able to read content created in this epoch at all two hundred years from now. While the NY Times article is mostly HTML (with lots and lots of script injected, but still), sites such as medium.com and many others created in this decade are just a single big JavaScript blob with auto-generated CSS.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#24

Post by ska »

xemoka wrote: post #22
ska wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we've got the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, then the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. I can't think of any other separate event of equal impact. And you are suggesting that no only are we currently within a similar scale event (plausible, but hardly proven), and there will another two such magnitude events in the next 200 years? Or are you noting that we, and future generations, will al…

The Islamic Golden Age, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment could probably (at their times) be considered quite important as well, I'm sure there are many more examples of these kinds of 'revolutions' or 'key milestones'. Perhaps not as impactful as the agricultural or industrial revolution, but we don't have distance from the time to determine if our current milestone will be either.

Absolutely they are important, and there are many of them.

For me the agricultural and industrial revolutions stand out as two inflection points, so if we are proposing lining up with them, we'd need pretty strong evidence. They both effectively fundamentally changed the way of life for the majority of humans on the planet.

Agree we are too close to say about our own rate of change.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#25

Post by ska »

StreakyCobra wrote: post #16
ska wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we've got the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, then the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. I can't think of any other separate event of equal impact. And you are suggesting that no only are we currently within a similar scale event (plausible, but hardly proven), and there will another two such magnitude events in the next 200 years? Or are you noting that we, and future generations, will al…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_revolution

Yes, that is the proposal OP was making. It isn't proven out yet but I did not it is plausible that the impact will be that large.

Do you see two more such (distinct) events in the next 200 years? To me that is completely implausible, so was trying to determine if I had misread.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#26

Post by ska »

WJW wrote: post #17
ska wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we've got the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, then the industrial revolution about 200 years ago. I can't think of any other separate event of equal impact. And you are suggesting that no only are we currently within a similar scale event (plausible, but hardly proven), and there will another two such magnitude events in the next 200 years? Or are you noting that we, and future generations, will al…

I think it is more likely that in 10,000 years we will see the "internet revolution" as part of the industrial revolution. It's only because we're in it that we can see it as separate things. For example, we now speak of a single "agricultural revolution", where in reality it would have spanned hundreds of years of had several different periods (discovering plants, discovering cattle, etc).

The first thought is interesting - I find that plausible also.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#27

Post by Kiro »

ska wrote: post #25
StreakyCobra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_revolution

Yes, that is the proposal OP was making. It isn't proven out yet but I did not it is plausible that the impact will be that large. Do you see two more such (distinct) events in the next 200 years? To me that is completely implausible, so was trying to determine if I had misread.

It's exponential. -10 000, -200, 0, 50, 55

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#28

Post by throwaway91111 »

ideonexus wrote: post #9

tldr; 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 pa…

But why pay for a book when you're entertaining yourself with streaming music and zombie shows? It is killing culture; just not the culture you care about.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#29

Post by mattnewton »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #23

I'm not even sure we'll be able to read content created in this epoch at all two hundred years from now. While the NY Times article is mostly HTML (with lots and lots of script injected, but still), sites such as medium.com and many others created in this decade are just a single big JavaScript blob with auto-generated CSS.

I'm not sure why we wouldn't be able to? The binaries / source of old browser versions aren't going away. It seems like it's a much easier problem than emulating old closed source console games, or dos programs, both of which have been done very well.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#30

Post by throwawaycopy »

Ever-lower barriers for creators?

There have never been any barriers for creators. Folk art has always been a part of human societies.

There were barriers for mass dissemination of artistic works, but not the process of creation.

Mass media put the local artists out of business. Before the advent of radio and recorded music there were many more musicians and bands. Now everyone has to compete on a global level.

I would argue that in this new global digital attention economy that there is even more competition and even less room for local and alternative voices.

Live music profits are at an all time high but it is all concentrated at the top. The long tail is a fallacy.

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