The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It • Hacker News Board

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#51

Post by dasil003 » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

fluxic wrote: post #32

Call me a pessimist, but as a content creator this piece came off as extremely out of touch. Yes: NYT is booming in subscriptions, and Patreon has carved out a nice little niche for supporting podcasters and YouTubers. But it's nowhere near the level of support artists have had for the last hundred years. Before, if you were a writer, you could write for the neighbourhood paper or magazine and carve out a decent livi…

The landscape is shifting yes, and it's harder to make money. But consider that the last 150 years of mass literacy and spare time to consume vast quantities of media is already a historical anomaly. If you look at the sheer quantity of culture produced and consumed, it's hard to see it as anything but a golden age. The fact that it's harder to make money in these conditions makes perfect economic sense.

But on the positive side, I think this gives us a helpful sign post on the way to UBI/post-scarcity society. Consider that one of the biggest political impediments to UBI is not just the puritan work ethic as applied to others, but perhaps even more fundamental is the individual's own need to feel useful. De-coupling creative output from ones livelihood does not necessarily have to be a terrible thing.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#52

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#53

Post by oblio » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

fluxic wrote: post #32

Call me a pessimist, but as a content creator this piece came off as extremely out of touch. Yes: NYT is booming in subscriptions, and Patreon has carved out a nice little niche for supporting podcasters and YouTubers. But it's nowhere near the level of support artists have had for the last hundred years. Before, if you were a writer, you could write for the neighbourhood paper or magazine and carve out a decent livi…

> Anecdatum: I wrote a series of Medium posts this month with a Patreon link at the bottom: 70k hits, $0 donations. It's hard for me to imagine reaching 70k people with my writing in 1910 and still being a pauper.

False equivalence. 70k hits means that 70k people somehow reached your page. Most of the probably closed the browser/tab before even fully loading the page.

I think in 1910 it would have been like counting people passing by the newspaper stand as "hits".

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#54

Post by TelmoMenezes » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:16 PM UTC

eduren wrote: post #45

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In that interpretation, the internet can only be an accelerating force; driving society forward into greater levels of social consciousness. Not necessarily. Take evolutionary processes. Diversity arises in part from isolation. This is why the Galapagos are such a crazy local ecosystem. The Internet globalises all communication -- it is easy to see how this can lead to more "bandwidth" as you say, but less actual c…

I like the evolutionary analogy. I agree that the global nature of internet communication will most probably lead to a homogenization effect. Truly distinct cultures will soften over time. The lack of diversity would reduce the output, but by how much? I see it as a second term in the equation we're (informally) discussing. A negating factor to be sure, but I think the net result will still be in the positive directi…

Thanks :) You might be right, of course. I hope so.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#55

Post by mattnewton » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

romaniv wrote: post #42

mattnewton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CDN-hosted scripts, for starters. Also, running old games in DOS Box is often a finicky process that requires some tinkering for every game. That's one of the reasons GOG.com took off so rapidly. People are gladly paying several bucks to save themselves the trouble of messing with configs and reading forums about game's quirks. This isn't a huge deterrent in case of games, but it will be a huge deterrent for retro-br…

Isn't the internet archive solving this problem? I guess I am taking them for granted and should donate.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#56

Post by fluxic » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:20 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #53

fluxic wrote: post #32

Call me a pessimist, but as a content creator this piece came off as extremely out of touch. Yes: NYT is booming in subscriptions, and Patreon has carved out a nice little niche for supporting podcasters and YouTubers. But it's nowhere near the level of support artists have had for the last hundred years. Before, if you were a writer, you could write for the neighbourhood paper or magazine and carve out a decent livi…

> Anecdatum: I wrote a series of Medium posts this month with a Patreon link at the bottom: 70k hits, $0 donations. It's hard for me to imagine reaching 70k people with my writing in 1910 and still being a pauper. False equivalence. 70k hits means that 70k people somehow reached your page. Most of the probably closed the browser/tab before even fully loading the page. I think in 1910 it would have been like counting…

30-40% of people read to the end of the articles

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#57

Post by arjie » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:25 PM UTC

ingucis wrote: post #35

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…

If Facebook allowed you more control over what you want to see in your Feed, i am sure lots of people would be happy to pay for it!

I'm sure lots of people would say that. I'm not sure anyone would pay.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#58

Post by oblio » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:26 PM UTC

fluxic wrote: post #56

oblio wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anecdatum: I wrote a series of Medium posts this month with a Patreon link at the bottom: 70k hits, $0 donations. It's hard for me to imagine reaching 70k people with my writing in 1910 and still being a pauper. False equivalence. 70k hits means that 70k people somehow reached your page. Most of the probably closed the browser/tab before even fully loading the page. I think in 1910 it would have been like counting…

30-40% of people read to the end of the articles

Alright, different attack angle: you wouldn't have reached 70k readers in 1910 because the barrier to entry for mass circulation was much higher :)

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#59

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:26 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #51

fluxic wrote: post #32

Call me a pessimist, but as a content creator this piece came off as extremely out of touch. Yes: NYT is booming in subscriptions, and Patreon has carved out a nice little niche for supporting podcasters and YouTubers. But it's nowhere near the level of support artists have had for the last hundred years. Before, if you were a writer, you could write for the neighbourhood paper or magazine and carve out a decent livi…

The landscape is shifting yes, and it's harder to make money. But consider that the last 150 years of mass literacy and spare time to consume vast quantities of media is already a historical anomaly. If you look at the sheer quantity of culture produced and consumed, it's hard to see it as anything but a golden age. The fact that it's harder to make money in these conditions makes perfect economic sense. But on the p…

[deleted]

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#60

Post by nickjarboe » Thu, Mar 16, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

ashark wrote: post #49

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…

~800-300 BC generated most of our surviving major religions (the major exceptions being Christianity and Islam, but both trace their origins to a religion that was formalized and created or finalized [most of] its canon in that time) plus the beginnings of mathematics as we know it, our earliest writings that are kind-of science and that often represent the founding documents of entire fields of study, the foundation…

Standardized gold and silver coinage (money) was also developed at this time. Another huge change for humanity. Maybe the two ideas are related. See "Debt: The First 5000 years" by David Graeber.