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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

#61

Post by skywhopper »

oblio wrote: post #58
fluxic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

And even if you had reached 700 readers with your 5-cent pamphlet, it would have cost you $50 to print the 1000-copy run, and you'd be $15 in the hole. Whereas you posted to Medium for free, with no editor or publisher in the way. You're out very little, and presumably your stuff is still out there for more people to find. Not true with your pamphlet in 1910.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#62

Post by TillE »

treehau5 wrote: post #13
muninn_ wrote: post #2

I 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.

I disagree with the whole notion of news itself. Thinking you can condense geopolitical, environmental, or scientific happenings into short, attention grabbing headlines and relay enough of the issues at play is crazy. Now journalism, I agree with. But it requires time and investment.

Right! We're still mostly locked into the newspaper model of "articles" for factual reporting, despite its complete arbitrariness on the web.

I'd love to see journalists experiment with perhaps a more wiki-like model of reporting, where you have one page for a certain topic which gets updated (new stuff at the top or otherwise readily visible).

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#63

Post by msabalau »

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…

Is writting a particularly representative example of cultural production? Back in the 40's only a quarter of the adult population even had a high school degree, now nearly everyone who has the temperament and interest to write can be trained. Thanks to the internet, a nearly infinite pool of writers have the opportunity for self expression, which they clearly value. At the same time, the economic value of undifferentiated writting approaches zero.

Contrast this with our current "golden age of television"--while costs are going down and quality is going up for viewers, the genuinely scarce and economically valuable skilled people who can make quality TV are being paid more. Overall the median salary for an artist today is higher than that of the average worker. You can believe that there are social issues that need to be overcome to improve the lives of people who work in and out of the arts, but it's hard to say that artists generally are living in "the worst of times"

And, of course, historically a large number of writers (those who weren't aristocratic dilettantes) had day jobs totally unrelated to writting. T.S. Eliot famously continuing to work in the sub-sub-basement of a bank for 3 years after publishing The Waste Land.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#64

Post by stephancoral »

throwawaycopy wrote: post #36
stephancoral wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Before the advent of radio and recorded music there were many more musicians and bands. That's just incorrect due to the sheer exponential increase of humans alive, not to mention the many cultural factors you are ignoring. Thousands of bands were started because kids heard old blues music over the radio and became inspired. I'd wager there's more bands and venues than ever now and if anything, I'm seeing more and m…

You're wrong. In the 19th century there was a much higher percentage of people who could play rudimentary musical forms. The quality of music and choice available to consumers has increased steadily. People would rather hear the best musicians in the world than the best musicians in their household or neighborhood. There is plenty of historical research on this topic beyond the common sense explanation I'm offering h…

Small towns are where music happens. I live in Western, MA - I can see music every night. If I drive out to a small town in upstate New York, I guarantee you there will be a bar with live music. Even a run down shithole like Poughkeepsie or Catskill has plenty of local bands. Some huge names in music have come from small towns in Georgia or in Ohio or in Michigan. One of the biggest indie record labels is based out of Nebraska.

If "people would rather hear the best musicians in the world than the best musicians in their household or neighborhood" than why are local acts booming in places like Portland, ME? Why are small bands filling out the bottom portion of huge festivals or starting their own?

Your post reads to me like someone who doesn't seem very aware or involved in music and mostly gets their information from online source and so called historical research rather than first-hand live experience.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#65

Post by alphapapa »

TillE wrote: post #62
treehau5 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the whole notion of news itself. Thinking you can condense geopolitical, environmental, or scientific happenings into short, attention grabbing headlines and relay enough of the issues at play is crazy. Now journalism, I agree with. But it requires time and investment.

Right! We're still mostly locked into the newspaper model of "articles" for factual reporting, despite its complete arbitrariness on the web. I'd love to see journalists experiment with perhaps a more wiki-like model of reporting, where you have one page for a certain topic which gets updated (new stuff at the top or otherwise readily visible).

This is a really interesting idea. Any story that really matters unfolds over a period of months or years, and stumbling upon a couple of articles a month about it doesn't inform the reader very well. And what if the first article you read about it is in the middle of the unfolding?

A wiki-style document, updated as the story unfolds, organized so that anyone can get an overview and then drill down into the details, seems like a really good idea. Some JavaScript and such could allow stories to be viewed chronologically, by topic, keyword, etc. (Something like TiddlyWiki could be a good place to start.)

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#66

Post by edmccard »

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…

>But it's nowhere near the level of support artists have had for the last hundred years.

I was thinking about this in the context of the John Wanamaker quote -- "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half".

If online advertising becomes perfectly efficient, that might lead to a 50% (or more) reduction in the amount of funding available for ad-supported content.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#67

Post by ska »

whiddershins wrote: post #43
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…

Yes, Ray Kurweil wrote about this. Technological progress increases at a logarithmic rate, so the time between major revolutions becomes smaller and smaller until it is continuous.

An interesting idea but hard to prove from a couple of points ! I'll have to dig up what he wrote.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#68

Post by aninhumer »

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).

Even from a contemporary perspective, one it's fairly easy to argue that the industrial revolution is still ongoing.

We have had many revolutionary technological developments throughout the past 200 years, such as radio, flight, and computers. And it doesn't seem like we're really slowing down yet.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#69

Post by Eridrus »

edmccard wrote: post #66
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…

>But it's nowhere near the level of support artists have had for the last hundred years. I was thinking about this in the context of the John Wanamaker quote -- "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half". If online advertising becomes perfectly efficient, that might lead to a 50% (or more) reduction in the amount of funding available for ad-supported content.

I disagree. This would increase the value of the useful impressions and increase the demand for advertising from niche players who can now effectively target their market.

Re: The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It

#70

Post by Eridrus »

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…

Despite all the vitriol about Twitter ads, those are probably my favourite ads on the internet since they tend to be software/security related, rather than the buy a car crap I get on Hulu, and I'm quite happy to get ads for things I might actually care about.
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