
The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It - ayanai
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/technology/how-the-internet-is-saving-culture-not-killing-it.html
======
fluxic
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 living (see: Hemingway, DFW, etc.) Now, unless
you're a staff writer for the NYT or maybe 10 other 1%er sites, there's no way
to make a living off subscription sites. They have killed local markets that
have supported writers. Book sales are down. Newspaper sales are down.
Literary magazine sales are non-existent. 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.

Two things: this isn't necessarily all doom and gloom. There are probably more
artists living than at any point in history. And the internet helps us reach
more people than ever before.

However, bragging that the world's most popular newspaper is adding
subscriptions and that another couple of creators are making $10,000 on
Patreon does not a Renaissance make. Patreon's PR team is trying to spin
something that—at least for writers—isn't happening. The needle is not moving.

~~~
dasil003
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.

~~~
milesrout
Whether or not you think that 'the last 150 years [...] is a historical
anomaly' is irrelevant. The fact is that it was better, and there's no
legitimate reason that it should now be worse except for the anticompetitive
actions of a few big corporations that loss lead by providing expensive-to-
produce services for free to eliminate competition.

------
padobson
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 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.

~~~
randomgyatwork
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.

~~~
patrickaljord
Why do you think users of these services create value for free? Maybe it's
because the value created for free is less than the value they get out of
using these services they create free value for. It is true that these
services get money thanks to the aggregated value that is created by all their
users but let's take facebook for example, they only make $48.76 per user per
year as of 2015 [1]. If they were to pay their users, they could not pay them
more than that per year. Not such an interesting deal for anyone involved,
even if Facebook was turned into a cooperative with 0 profit. Users would only
get $48.76 at best per year and as a non profit, Facebook would probably be
way less efficient and therefor only offer half or maybe less than that.

Now Facebook could turn into a paid service and pay its users more but then it
would have much fewer users and then way less money to offer and now we're
back to paying users little.

Seems like the current deal isn't such a bad one, Facebook connects a massive
amount of people around the world including poor immigrants with their family
(I know a few) and in exchange these users create value for Facebook. It's a
voluntary win-win situation for both parties. Adults entering mutually
beneficial deals with each others and enjoying it, what's wrong with that?

1:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11891353/How-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/11891353/How-
much-money-do-you-make-for-Facebook.html)

~~~
ABCLAW
I believe you may have some fatal unstated assumptions in there.

The co-op concept doesn't require equal distribution of proceeds to
participants. Nor does it require that the net distribution of proceeds equal
the total value per user. Nor is incentivizing value creation on your platform
a zero-sum game between facebook and content creators.

------
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.

~~~
stephancoral
>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 more people make a living off their music thanks to the
network effects of social media combined with touring. I've watched two of my
friend's bands - pretty weirdo stoner pop music - go on national tours
supporting major acts (Of Montreal was one) and it most likely would've never
happened if not for the exposure and channels of the internet.

~~~
throwawaycopy
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 here.

Amendeum:

I assume you live in a media hub like NYC, SF or LA, where there is a
concentration of mass media professionals.

If you drive out to a small town you will find a very low number of local
musicians. Before mass media there would have been a number of local music
groups. Today people living in small towns listen to what the mass media
professionals are making for them.

These are the same kind of basic economic principles that lead to any kind of
concentrated specialization, and on a global scale, comparative advantage.

~~~
jdietrich
Before the widespread adoption of radio, pianos were an essential part of any
household that could afford one. Pianos were a common sight in pubs, village
halls, workplace canteens and practically anywhere that people would gather.
Nearly everyone participated in social singing to some extent. The streets
were filled with buskers, most pubs had a pianist or accordionist, most
families had at least one person who could play an instrument. Music was as
omnipresent as it is today, but it was performed live by whoever happened to
be around.

The decline in music-making over the past century has been astonishing, in
small ways and large. Whistling used to be a common sound on the street, but
is now almost extinct. Social singing is now a rarity and would be difficult
to revive, because there is no longer a shared repertoire of song to draw
from. A vast chasm has opened up between "musicians" and "non-musicians".

~~~
throwawaycopy
I'm very fortunate to live in a musical household and have a lot of musicians
in my life. My wife and I both write and sing songs together. I've got a crew
of people who get together to play covers and jam.

It is incredibly rewarding and gives me a very real sense of participating and
contributing to my culture and community.

When I was a social media addict living my life through a screen while
theoretically living in San Francisco I was frequently pulled down by bouts of
depression.

Ever since I quit social media, got rid of my smartphone, discovered bluegrass
and country music and moved to a place where these musical cultures are a
fundamental part of society my life has gotten so much more rich and
satisfying.

------
relics443
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.

~~~
ska
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 always think we are on
the cusp of "great things" but for almost all cases will be wrong?

~~~
WJW
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).

~~~
acchow
The industrial revolution was centered around the production of _things_ , and
machines' effect on that.

We're now shifting to a knowledge economy, and the internet has been
transforming that. I think of this transformation as distinct from the
Industrial Revolution (either the first or the second).

~~~
milesrout
Again this is recency bias. You think it's more significant because you're
experiencing it.

'Knowledge economy' is a myth anyway. The 'knowledge economy' produces nothing
of actual physical value to people and .com bubble 2.0 will burst within 5
years.

------
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.

~~~
mattnewton
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.

~~~
romaniv
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-browsing, because the whole point to the Web is its
interconnectedness. Plus, there are many more websites than there are games.

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

------
garysieling
At the beginning they talk about places that have lost income, but the
internet has also preserved a lot of content that was only accessible if you
visited a place that owned a copy (library, museum, etc).

For instance, UCLA has a great old lecture series from the '60s they've been
digitizing:
[https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&collection1=UCLA%20Archive...](https://www.findlectures.com/?p=1&collection1=UCLA%20Archives)

There are a ton of other places doing this. Once these types of projects are
funded once, they can be available pretty much forever, because they are drop
in the bucket for youtube, which seems tremendously cost effective.

------
eduren
The 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/](https://xkcd.com/915/)

~~~
TelmoMenezes
> 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 cultural output.

~~~
eduren
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 direction.

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

------
muninn_
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.

~~~
treehau5
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.

~~~
TillE
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).

~~~
alphapapa
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.)

------
ideonexus
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 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.

~~~
throwaway91111
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.

~~~
PeterisP
Bet really, _why_ pay for a book when people are choosing streaming music and
zombie shows as their preferred medium of culture? If anything, that's an
illustration of how culture in total is growing, even if it's killing parts of
the culture that you care about.

~~~
throwaway91111
Who cares if culture is growing if you can't connect to your neighbor over it?

Culture is more than just hobbies. It's about identity.

~~~
PeterisP
This growth allows me to connect to distant people who share my culture and
identity, instead to my physical neighbor with conflicting values.

It opens up cultural niches that aren't viable in smaller communities or
weren't viable before - something that won't have a critical mass to grow or
even exist in a city of 100,000 people can have a thriving culture worldwide
nowadays.

Yes, we're losing the notion of a shared monolithic identity kept together by
mass media keeping "everyone" (or 3-4 major groups/demographics each) in a
nation on the same page culturally. While it does mean that the society is
becoming less united, this is increasing diversity and bringing the culture
towards the individual differences in taste; I believe that in the end this
trend is a good thing, both for the individual people and culture at large.

~~~
throwaway91111
I suppose; I can certainly see the benefits.

I don't think you're acknowledging the other side of the trade off: if you
aren't interested in something popular, you're going to be effectively alone
in spite of a torrent of options for interacting with others. Reducing popular
culture to sub groups makes this much, much easier to encounter.

My friends call this "Facebook fatigue": looking at hundreds of friends and
feeling alienated because of few shared interests.

Regardless, claiming that culture is "dead" or "thriving" seems to be missing
from evidence.

------
M_Grey
"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.

~~~
scandox
Except he didn't mean it that way. He wasn't saying "don't bore with me your
particular views on culture". He was saying "if you have to analyse culture
then you're a pernicious misfit and probably a Jew".

So I think we need a better shorthand for this - just so we all know what
we're really saying.

------
nickgrosvenor
I made music as a hobby for a decade and without the internet no one would
have heard any of my music. With the internet, my songs have been played
hundreds of thousands of times.

So I'd agree with this. The internet is responsible for my bands success.

------
partycoder
The Internet reduces the entry barrier for publishing, and that is a twofold
sword.

It helps content creators to disseminate their content, but increases the
variance of content quality.

------
beshrkayali
The Internet is both killing culture and saving it at the same time, not for
humans though.

