The wonderful thing about writing a book (It's nice to know that sentence has appeared more frequently in this blog than, "The awful thing about writing a book") is that there's no one to tell you not to devote a few thousand words to idle speculation. A big theme in the Crowdsourcing Book is that the rise of amateurism is hardly some unprecedented effect of our current techno-historical moment, but in fact the manifestation of a universal human impulse that our current array of technologies just happens to serve. In other words, as much as things change, so they stay the same. I explore this in several parts of the book, including this bit from Chapter Eight:
Before You Know Where You're Going, You Have to Know Where You've Been
There was a time when almost all culture would have been considered “user-generated content.” Earlier I noted that many of the greatest artistic and scientific achievements were made by people we would now call amateurs. But even this observation diminishes the contributions made by the forgotten part-time poets and Sunday painters who created glorious, if ultimately ephemeral, works that were valued in their day, even if only by their close circle of acquaintances.
Before the rise of mass reproduction—the era in which photography, film, the phonograph, and the radio gave rise to the commoditization of cultural products— there was far less of a distinction between audience and creator. The centuries preceding the industrial era were characterized by a more complex and interactive relationship between creators and their audiences. New musical compositions were distributed as sheet music, which could then be interpreted according to regional preference and individual whim. In what was still a largely agrarian society, popular entertainment of the Victorian era took the form of regional theaters, church sermons, Saturday dances, and all manner of parlor games. Entertainment was a private—or at most a regional—affair comprised of people entertaining one an- other. There were very few cultural products that we would describe as “hits” by today’s standards.
This changed quickly and dramatically with the rise of modern technologies such as the phonograph, the radio, and the cinema. The mass production and distribution of culture required—indeed enforced—a more passive form of consumption. A division emerged between culture producers and culture consumers. Viewed in this historical light, the explosive growth in user-generated content is less a new phenomenon than a sign that the im- pulse to interact meaningfully with our media—to participate in its creation—never went away. The Internet—the very architecture of which enforces decentralization— created a natural stage for a participatory approach to media production and consumption. Indeed, the booming genre of online “fan fiction,” in which readers craft new plotlines to everything from Star Trek to Harry Potter, is just a modern manifestation of the ancient, oral tradition of storytelling, in which each teller reinterprets the story.
Long before the emergence of the World Wide Web in 1994, the Internet took the form of a many-to-many communication vehicle, first through e-mail and then through Usenet groups, which were simple, all-text fore- runners of the sorts of discussion forums one can find on nearly any community website or in a venue like Yahoo groups. Naturally, the first people to use the Web were those already familiar with the Internet, so early web- sites followed a similar model, which again prized the contributions—even if these consisted, as they do today, of mostly overheated opinions—of the individual. On the Internet, the least-visited blogs and the largest corporate marketing site occupy the same cultural real estate: both are just one click away.
More than just an effective cost-cutting strategy, crowdsourcing holds the potential to spawn for an economy in which we aren’t all forced into predetermined categories, where boys with high math scores aren’t routed toward engineering schools and girls with fanciful approaches to their science projects aren’t cheerfully encouraged to focus on the humanities. In the summer of 2006 I spent a few days wandering around the moveable punk-rock feast known as the Warped Tour. This is no mere subculture; the Warped Tour is attended by close to a million people each year. Above and beyond being a showcase for scores of mostly unknown rock bands, the Warped Tour provides space for a bustling cultural commerce that operates out of kiosks and tents constructed around the fringes of the stages themselves. I’m not sure any experience before or since has given me quite as much faith in the future of mankind. Many of the musicians here also wrote books of poetry, or ran little tattoo parlors, or operated websites. The point is that these kids didn’t feel a need to describe themselves as a practitioner of one craft as opposed to another. They made stuff be- cause it turned them on. Those kids have a message for all the lawyers who like to paint and the painters who like to conduct backyard bird counts and the computer programmers who like to teach and the teachers who like to program: The future has a place for you. In the future, we will all be dilettantes.
What a gorgeous passage. I love your observation on how we are going back to our natural inclination to create entertainment for ourselves and one another.
I found these words to be particularly interesting, "The mass production and distribution of culture required—indeed enforced—a more passive form of consumption. A division emerged between culture producers and culture consumers. Viewed in this historical light, the explosive growth in user-generated content is less a new phenomenon than a sign that the im- pulse to interact meaningfully with our media—to participate in its creation—never went away. The Internet—the very architecture of which enforces decentralization— created a natural stage for a participatory approach to media production and consumption."
I got my master's in History of Decorative Arts and Design and can totally see your above statements used in a thesis exploring further how mass production and distribution of culture influenced design of places and objects- i.e. TV rooms. Up until just a few years ago one of the landmark restaurants in my city - Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa - had individual TVs at each table in their dessert room. I remember going one time for Bananas Foster while watching The Simpsons. It's going to be interesting to see how today's designers respond for spaces where we can engage and participate. What will the future look like?
Keep up the great work!
Posted by: Julia | June 03, 2008 at 08:45 AM
“The wonderful thing about writing a book.” Ah, you are chipping away at a life changing experience whether clothed in idle speculation or not, that viewed through a greater lens might look like a seed bed for unimaginable change. Limited as we are by sense perception, metamorphosing biographies offer but a slice at a time view that at best indicate little to the untrained eye.
“Viewed in this historical light, the explosive growth in user-generated content is less a new phenomenon than a sign that the im- pulse to interact meaningfully with our media—to participate in its creation—never went away.”
That impulse was probably sequestered by both the forces of mass reproduction and an industrial era that promised huge bounties and rewards for the loss of individual participation. In retrospect one sees the promise was more a carrot on a stick than any real hope of anything more than a nibble, certainly for the western world.
“The future has a place for you. In the future, we will all be dilettantes.”
Back to the discussion of chapter three, it might well be an over generalization to suggest that at any time “we will all be dilettantes.” We all might be offered the possibility but history shows us clearly that the majority appear to prefer, or be lost in, the pull of anonymousness, strangely enough of a crowd!
The loss of individualized participation and its reemergence has seen it’s origins in the self same Petri dish, where the pull of materialism sidles up against the human spirit!
Alan
Posted by: Alan | June 04, 2008 at 07:34 AM
Jeff,
Told you last week after your BEA presentation that I wouldn't simply post "your work is great" and try to find some type of constructive criticism for your post but ... Sorry just can't come up with anything other than praise (shrug)
Fanfiction is such a fascinating concept on the impact of media on individuals. This is the audience the book world needs to target!
Posted by: Leah | June 04, 2008 at 08:32 AM
If you want to discover something innovative for user generated content, have a look at http://www.webriq.com.
Maybe a bit complex on features but easy to use if you want to build and manage user generated content websites.
Posted by: Philippe Bodart | February 12, 2009 at 08:30 AM