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The Web: Destroyer or Savior of Culture, Pay and Employment?
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The cost of creating and distributing content has fallen to near-zero, and that is not going away.
Last month I explored the contentious question, Is the Web Destroying the Cultural Economy? In my recent video discussion with analyst Gordon T. Long, we expanded this question to pay (earned income) and jobs, i.e. is the Web eroding pay and jobs?
I also discussed these issues with Mike Swanson of Wall Street Window in a podcast Is The Web Destroying the Cultural Economy? An historian by training, Mike is well-placed to put these issues in a larger context.
There are several key dynamics at work. One is the democratization of expression and journalism unleashed by the Web has eroded the industrial meritocracy of gatekeepers and vertically integrated content-media corporations: music labels, publishers, newspapers, etc.
The web has enabled virtually anyone with Internet access to create a nearly-free global distribution network--what I have termed 800 Million Channels of Me (February 21, 2011). This blog is obviously one of those millions of globally distributed channels.
Critics of this democratization feel that this has unleashed an avalanche of mediocrity that is judged on "likes" and pages views--a process in which talent is "lost in a sea of garbage."
The other side of the debate sees the demise of the gatekeepers, who could enforce their own view of what was valuable culturally and economically, as freeing all those who could never get past the gatekeepers. This explosion of creativity and expression is an unalloyed good thing.
It does create a new problem and a new need--some way to curate the flood of new content, as no one digital consumer can possibly listen to, read or watch more than a tiny sliver of the content being produced.
This curation and editorial selection is an intermediary layer between the creator of content and the end user--a layer that replaces the old industrial-meritocracy with a free-floating, self-organizing group of intermediaries who add value by sorting through a larger slice of the web's gargantuan output of content.
But few deny that this flood of free content--music, books, articles, videos, etc.--has drastically reduced the income paid to content creators. Take the porn industry, for example, a once-profitable distribution system for adult content. Now that virtually anyone can bare all and create adult content, the cost of adult content has plummeted to near-zero.
The music industry has certainly exploded in terms of free content, but the income of the entire industry has fallen roughly in half, from $14 billion to $7 billion. The subscription model that is gaining market share--Spotify, Netflix, etc.--offers end users nearly unlimited content for a modest flat monthly fee.
It's difficult for content creators to make much money in this model unless they have millions of end users downloading content.
Some musicians say that Spotify has enabled them to earn a living performing live by introducing their music to a large audience; others are less enthusiastic about the consequences of earning a few dollars from 1 million downloads (for instance, those who don't constantly tour).
Does culture benefit or suffer when the judgment of cultural value is universalized? There is no one answer, as those who see the flood of self-expression as the death of the cultural economy have some solid points: if only a handful of people can make a middle-class living creating content that is widely recognized as being valuable in some fashion, then where does that leave the culture?
Those who see the process of the wheat being sorted from the chaff by the users themselves see new opportunities for creators who were once marginalized to earn a living from a core group of fans and supporters. Musicians with such a core base can earn a living from a much smaller audience than in the old days of mass marketing of a few select bands. Writers like myself can earn more per book sold because we control all the rights and income.
One thing we know for sure: the cost of creating and distributing content has fallen to near-zero, and that is not going away. This impacts more than just content and culture, as Gordon and I discuss in What Do these Trends Suggest? (32:42 video; Macro-Analytics, with Gordon T. Long)
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"The tripalium is an instrument of torture. Labor means ’suffering’. We are unwise to forget the origin of the words ’travail’ and ’labour’. At least the nobility never forgot their own dignity and the indignity which marked their bondsmen. The aristocratic contempt for work reflected the master’s contempt for the dominated classes; work was the expiation to which they were condemned to all eternity by the divine decree which had willed them, for impenetrable reasons, to be inferior. Work took its place among the sanctions of Providence as the punishment for poverty, and because it was the means to a future salvation such a punishment could take on the attributes of pleasure. basically, work was less important than submission."
— Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life
It's the Gatekeepers that are the enforcers of mediocrity and banality.
ie. In Canada, the CBC ensures discourse is truncated to its benign fascism of politically correct insipid liberality.
Simutaneously of course, while limiting dissent, it preaches tolerance and open mindedness to any detractors.
ZH would never exist without a net. It's not stupid enough.
Exactly. The fact that the French government, for example, wants to censor Internet Speech tells you who is losing the war against Truth.
Moreover, people under 30 don't even watch the network news. When I ask my 25 and 27 year olds what they think of CNN or CNBC, they don't even know who they are other than TV Networks, and more inportantly, couldn't give a rats ass.
Good for your kids and good on you. MSM is freakin' poison for the mind. Now that the spell is starting to break you see the worlds governments and all their provacateurs working overtime to prove there are boogie men. These freaks are about weapons, death and such, just awful. Raging war on creation for 2000 yrs. solid (and before). Millions upon millions of innocent lives taken in the past 2 millenia :-(
The internet is a tool. Like all tools it can be used for good or for evil. Fire was probably considered pretty damned revolutionary when somebody figured out how to harness it's power. Ditto for things like bronze, steel, the wheel, the inclined plane, arabic numerals, algebra, calculus, electricity, movable type printing presses, atomic power and my personal favorite, gunpowder. It all comes down to the skill and motivations of those wielding that tool.
No simple rule you can apply to it that cuts out the bad uses and only allows the good. Sorry, but there's no easy answers on this subject.
yes, horse is out of the barn there, agreed ... in this life we see there is always going to be some bad guys. i believe it's for a reason, but i'll keep those thoughts to myself... lots of good people posting on this board though, it gives me some hope
First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.
He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican “enemies.” He abandons our allies, appeases tyrants, coddles adversaries and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.
Now he’s coming for Israel.
Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest. He is transforming the whole world before our eyes. Do you see it yet?
Against the backdrop of the tsunami of trouble he has unleashed, Obama’s pledge to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel cannot be taken lightly. Already paving the way for an Iranian nuke, he is hinting he’ll also let the other anti-Semites at Turtle Bay have their way. That could mean American support for punitive Security Council resolutions or for Palestinian statehood initiatives. It could mean both, or something worse.
Whatever form the punishment takes, it will aim to teach Bibi Netanyahu never again to upstage him. And to teach Israeli voters never again to elect somebody Obama doesn’t like.
Apologists and wishful thinkers, including some Jews, insist Obama realizes that the special relationship between Israel and the United States must prevail and that allowing too much daylight between friends will encourage enemies.
Those people are slow learners, or, more dangerously, deny-ists.
If Obama’s six years in office teach us anything, it is that he is impervious to appeals to good sense. Quite the contrary. Even respectful suggestions from supporters that he behave in the traditions of American presidents fill him with angry determination to do it his way.
For Israel, the consequences will be intended. Those who make excuses for Obama’s policy failures — naive, bad advice, bad luck — have not come to grips with his dark impulses and deep-seated rage.
His visceral dislike for Netanyahu is genuine, but also serves as a convenient fig leaf for his visceral dislike of Israel. The fact that it’s personal with Netanyahu doesn’t explain six years of trying to bully Israelis into signing a suicide pact with Muslims bent on destroying them. Netanyahu’s only sin is that he puts his nation’s security first and refuses to knuckle under to Obama’s endless demands for unilateral concessions.
That refusal is now the excuse to act against Israel. Consider that, for all the upheaval around the world, the president rarely has a cross word for, let alone an open dispute with, any other foreign leader. He calls Great Britain’s David Cameron “bro” and praised Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, who had called Zionists, “the descendants of apes and pigs.”
Obama asked Vladimir Putin for patience, promising “more flexibility” after the 2012 election, a genuflection that earned him Russian aggression. His Asian pivot was a head fake, and China is exploiting the vacuum. None of those leaders has gotten the Netanyahu treatment, which included his being forced to use the White House back door on one trip, and the cold shoulder on another.
It is a clear and glaring double standard.
Most troubling is Obama’s bended-knee deference to Iran’s Supreme Leader, which has been repaid with “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” demonstrations in Tehran and expanded Iranian military action in other countries.
The courtship reached the height of absurdity last week, when Obama wished Iranians a happy Persian new year by equating Republican critics of his nuclear deal with the resistance of theocratic hard-liners, saying both “oppose a diplomatic solution.” That is a damnable slur given that a top American military official estimates that Iranian weapons, proxies and trainers killed 1,500 US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who in their right mind would trust such an evil regime with a nuke?
Yet Netanyahu, the leader of our only reliable ally in the region, is repeatedly singled out for abuse. He alone is the target of an orchestrated attempt to defeat him at the polls, with Obama political operatives, funded in part by American taxpayers, working to elect his opponent.
They failed and Netanyahu prevailed because Israelis see him as their best bet to protect them. Their choice was wise, but they better buckle up because it’s Israel’s turn to face the wrath of Obama.
http://nypost.com/2015/03/22/israel-beware-of-obama/
blah blah blah, yeah yeah yeah. Did you really have to put "cheers" behind Cliff Claven? Did you really think no one would know who Cliff was? Even with his picture? Whatevah!
PS> Everyone knows Zionists are not descended from apes and pigs, they are descended from the beast from the sea.
"Now he’s coming for Israel"
This is hilarious! The Zionist lobby has total control of the U.S. Congress. The State Department is completely infiltrated by Zionists. No one can be appointed to any senior government position without swearing undieing loyalty to Israel. The Main Stream Media: radio, television, newspapers, and Hollywood are all mostly owned by six large corporations all controlled by Zionists. There is a Zionist praetorian guard around Obama. Does anyone really believe that Obama "...is coming for Israel"? This is the funniest thing I've read in a long time!
“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. ”
- Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era
I suggest that you, and all others who labour under this mirage that "it's how you use it that counts", go read "Understanding Media" by Marshall Macluhan. Back in the 60's, he mocked the "literate" man who opined "I pay no attention to advertising" unaware that, in Macluhan's words, 'he was swimming in a sea of advertising". New media change our sense ratios by 'outing' and 'extending' our natural senses. For example, the wheel extends the foot, and makes travel that 200 years ago seemed impossible into the commonplace. ("Around the world in 80 days"? Today, with a credit card and good connections, you can go around the world in 80 hours!) similarly, the telephone extends the ear, the telescope the eye, etc.
What does the intertube extend? Our very brains and, to some, our consciousness. I used to clutter my mind with baseball statistics from the 1960's; I don't bother anymore, because I can look them up at a moment's notice. Thus, the net extends our memory. By allowing us to find what we to know when we want to know it - the ideal conditions for learning - the net extends our knowledge. By allowing us to maintain relationships via social media and other technologies (Skype, email), the net extends our social network. However, it takes time for man as a whole, and each of us as an individual, to regain psychic equilibrium after these changes. Think of it as a wheel where two or three spokes have suddenly gotten longer - the ride's gonna be a little bumpy until we learn to cope with the change.
Note that I haven't said a word about 'content'. Content, in Macluhan's view, was the 'juicy piece of steak the burglar dangles to distract the dog'. While governments worry about terrororrists, schools worry about name calling and bullying, and parents worry that little 16-year old Beatrice's ta-tas might show up - all of them focused on content - the net is remaking our brains, and our society, in ways that authorities never notice. As some commentators above have mentioned, the disintermediation of the net is reducing, if not eliminating, the role of 'gatekeepers'. It is also reducing the role of middlemen everywhere, allowing producers and consumers to interact directly, or nearly so. iTunes is a perfect example of this - where once there were thousands of record shops, most of them are now failed or greatly downsized, and iTunes is the biggest purveyor of music on the planet. How many jobs were lost on this transition?
Another thing the net has done is made it enormously simpler to streamline your supply chain, and squeeze the inefficiencies out of it. Not that long ago, manufacturers would produce thousands or millions of things, and send those out to warehouses, where goods sat in crates until the local Sears or Pep Boys needed it. Computerised inventory, better shipping logistics, and electronic data interchange all converged to reduce or eliminate the warehouser's role in the economy. This alone would lead to the loss of millions of jobs worldwide.
The message of the net is this: the days of simple, brain-dead jobs (assembly line, retail clerk, etc.) that could provide a living wage are gone, or almost gone. The main reason for retail staff these days is to prevent theft; if you could actually trust people, all you'd need is the space, the goods, and a debit/credit machine; the people add little or no value. To make a living these days, you need to be in a field where you are learning as you go (or you need to be in a field where government has created and maintains high barriers to entry/prevents competition, e.g. every public sector uinon job). You may not like it, but the days of learning a skill once, and using it for 30 years are gone.
Macluhan's term? "Learning a living" - a 'probe' he extended into "The dominant form of work in the future will be paid learning", which pretty much describes R&D, selling, even professional services like doctors and lawyers. (Ya, the doc/shyster learned some basic rules 20 years ago, but woe to him or her that hasn't kept up with the latest technology/medicines/rulings, and also each case is different, meaning they must learn what the problem is before they can try to correct it.)
Macluhan also wrote that the biggest problem is that 'the TV generation cannot look ahead'. (He meant the Boomers, who came alive during TV's explosion). Don't we see this in every political party, every financial entity? "Extend and pretend" is the mantra these days because TPTB cannot bring themselves to face the expected results of their asinine financial, political, and social ideas. Macluhan felt that TV - regardless of content - made people too fixated on the here-and-now, and unable to understand the consequences of their actions. (Side note: Macluhan was dealing with 1960's TV - mostly black and white, most low definition, mostly over the air reception with all the snow/fuzzy/interference/etc that entails. He used the term 'mosaic' to describe that level of TV, as if we were tactiley interpreting a stream of black and white dots. He wrote once 'when TV reaches the same level of picture quality as the movies, it will be completely different.") The introduction of fast forward and rewind abilities, along with high-def screens, has changed how people interact with TV. As a young boy, watching TV at home was like watching a movie at a theatre - if you dared to speak while the action was on, your parents shushed you. You were only allowed to speak during commercials. Now, with high-def, many people use TV purely as background noise while they do other things, only occasionally turning their attention to it. That is why young people today use and process TV, the net, their phones, and social media in ways that older people (like me!) just don't understand. (Why, for example, would you want to spend a minute typing a 20 word text when you could just phone the person, and give them the same data verbally in ten seconds? Yet, kids text, and I wonder why my daughters don't answer my phone calls.)
The internet is a vast communications medium, and as a result, is reshaping virtually every element of our lives, from sex (teledildonics, anyone?) to work to leisure. As always, people are distracted by its content, while ignoring the much more powerful changes underfoot.
"The fact that the French government, for example, wants to censor Internet Speech tells you who is losing the war against Truth."
Hi Latina, I agree that the web is a threat to governments around the World. But you must know that there is actually very little internet censorship in France compared to say, Russia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia#Data_retentio...
That would be Latina Escrava Lover .... China, North Korea, Iran .... Cuba, Venezuela .... I hope the Internet does away with the NEA and a million stupid, socialist teachers .... just say NO .... to Bricks and Mortarboard education !
With the end of the gatekeepers, we basically traded the casting couch for unlimited free porn.
Sounds like a fair trade for us non-gatekeepers.
Porn is a helluva drug.....
It's like when there was live T.V. and non-corporate channels.
They slowly took over the networks, and the channels, and the medium.
Got people used to it, thinking it was a source of "information", then molded it to their purpose.
Same will be true of the Internet. Notice how they have trained the Millenials and the A.O. (Always On) generations to use their "smart" phones and thumbs?
Like that. No keyboards, no complete sentences, no real information - just filtered funneled pictures and thumb swipe or "like" or "dislike" responses.
You're either "for them" or "against them". And if you are "against them" they own the media, the hospitals and Doctors/Nurses, and the Police.
It only changes when the Soma and Spice stop flowing and the microwave generation can't zap their next meal or buy it on credit or EBT at the nearest salt, fat, n' sugar shack.
BS Article. You don't measure society by how easy it is for musicians and pornstars to make money.
A far better measurement would be of how many people who are willing to do honest work are instead destitute while those born with used car salesman skills flourish unpunished.
After seeing Margaret Hodge on a recent BBC Panorama show, where she attacked HSBC for helping tax dodgers, I looked her up on wikipedia on the web. Hodge has been the MP for Barking since a by-election on 9 June 1994, held due to the death of Jo Richardson, who was the MP for Barking. As a new MP, Hodge co-nominated the candidature of Tony Blair, a former neighbor in Islington, to be the new leader of the Labor Party after the sudden death of John Smith.
Josephine (Jo) Richardson (28 August 1923 – 1 February 1994) was a British Labor Party politician. At the time of her death she was Member of Parliament for Barking, a post she had held since 1974.
John Smith QC MP (13 September 1938 – 12 May 1994) was a British Labor Party politician who served as Leader of the Labor Party from July 1992 until his death from a heart attack in May 1994.
What a coincidence, Hodge and her best political friend, Tony Blair, both profiting from the unexpected deaths of people holding jobs they wanted. No foul play there, for sure. Or maybe not. Hodge's family connections may have helped, the Oppenheimer family relocated to London from Egypt and started the family-owned steel-trading company Stemcor, today the world's largest privately owned steel-trading corporation and the sixth largest British company in private hands, with an annual turnover of over £6 billion in 2011. Hodge is a shareholder. Stemcor pays near zero British corporate taxes on its profits, by the way, claiming it has legitimate losses to offset any income made. Ho, ho, ho.
Hodge was first elected as a councilor for the London Borough of Islington in 1973. The Islington Labour Party was badly affected by the defection of members and elected representatives to the Social Democratic Party but, when the dust had settled, Hodge had emerged as Council Leader in 1982, a post which she held until 1992, when she resigned for her key role in covering up pedophile activities by well-connected degenerates.
In 1990, Liz Davies, a senior social worker employed by the borough and her manager, David Cofie, raised concerns about sexual abuse of children in Islington Council care. Correspondence between Hodge and the director of social work indicates that she declined a request for extra resources to investigate. In early 1992, Davies resigned from her post and requested that Scotland Yard investigate the allegations.
The Evening Standard, again in 1992, then began reporting on the allegations of abuse in Islington's children's homes, the initial article of which Hodge described as a "sensationalist piece of gutter journalism", although she has since apologized for this outburst, asserting that her officials had given her false information. Shortly afterwards Hodge resigned to pursue a career with Price Waterhouse. In 1995, the "White Report" into sexual abuse in Islington Care Homes reported that the council had failed adequately to investigate the allegations and blamed its doctrinaire interpretation of equal opportunities and fear of being branded homophobic. That "White Report" was a cover-up to protect Hodge and numerous high-placed Brit perverts.
Her friend, Prime Minister Tony Blair, appointed Hodge as the first person to be Children's Minister when the post was created in 2003 but she suffered difficulties after the Islington controversy; her resignation was called for on several occasions by the press and parliamentary opposition. Nothing was done, of course.
Looking at Hodge's career, it is no surprise that pedophile MPs could carry on their activities in Britain with no fear of prosecution from the worthless Scotland Yard and with the British government quick to issue D notices to declare as state secrets any evidence of the perverted activities of MPs, a Home Secretary and even a few British army generals.
Wikipedia is great.
I don't feel sorry for many content producers. If they don't want to share it for near or equal zero fees, they can remove the content from the Internet, play live in concerts and sell their music on Amazon and so forth.
If people wish to make porno movies and give it away, that is their business. Is it worth paying for? I don't think so.
Much of the rest, art and so on, is questionable anyway. Now I can see it for nothing, it is interesting, but not something I would pay for.
Agree with the "live concerts" for musicians. I have known quite a few over the years disappointed with CD sales. Music is free on the net now. Live music is worth it if you can afford it, that's where to make the money, and it's as tough a road as it's always been. Live is the real deal, always has been.
Regarding other content, makes me wonder if anyone ever archived the old usenet newsgroups, I unplugged and that whole paradigm was gone when I came back to technology some 12 or 13 yrs. later. There was some good content in there - bigger props, on average, before the point and shoot days.
in a van to stinking beer joints.... either that or you are forced into the monopoly, i repeat-monoploy, that is livenation.
i played a good number of beer joints when young (for $30 a night - no cut of tips) - more years ago than i care to cop to. there is no other way, hone your chops, and keep honing, then go where you can... sh*tloads of awesome players out there, which is cool, money is hard to come by for artists, but then art really aint about money
No comments, that cannot be good. You could argue that free distribution means everyone can get their particular point out there. Does that allow for a better examination of values, or does it result in an endless splintering of opinon over what is core and what is tertiary?
.
For most it doesn't seem to do either of those things. People just gravitate toward content that reinforces their own beliefs. Sad that instead of an old school free press reporting "just the facts" we have corporate owned news entertainment.
I get offended sometimes by comments here, but sometimes I learn something. Better than no comments, which seems to be the model main stream news sites are going to.
As far as a curator, they are out there. I like to drop by rense.com once a week or so. A lot of stuff I see there first I later see here or in the MSM.
IT'S A TRAP. I will this was a joke.
Of course, one can always just install a bittorrent utility and grab free stuff from kickass and piratebay.
Content isn't the only thing the web (the internet; large-scale human digital communication) offers. It also offers the opportunity to completely rethink collective human decision-making. Focusing on content is focusing on a relatively minor detail in everyone's lives.
I think you've nailed it. The web allows the mass to examine what the elite decided, and to rethink the whole thing. Unfortunately, relatively few of the mass avail themselves of this.
It only takes a few percent to make the masses take a look. Just look at what the anti-GMO/Monsanto groups have done. McDonalds sales are falling, people are afraid to eat it now. That would of not of been possible without the internet.
It is a threat to middle-men. And especially to the biggest middle-men of all: governments
I try to earn a living building. I have been been vocal on my views on the uncontrolled trespass of our border, to put it mildly. And how it has devalued the labor and talent pool.
I have been told to suck it up, quit crying, and learn how to deal with the Paridigm shift.
These changes are too rapid for humans to adjust, I believe.
Hang in there man. I'm in the same boat and have all but starved to death for the last 5 yrs. literally. The people running this country want blood in the streets. Get your butt to the country if it's not there. Pretty soon a homegrown tomato is gonna be worth a lot of "money"
At the risk of going off on an unrelated tangent, when you realize that your neighbors are raiding your garden and stealing your home-grown tomatoes at three AM because they are hungry and can't afford (or are unwilling) to barter with you, you'll know that your property rights have been violated.
Yes, if it melts down, things are gonna get ugly (i'm fairly remote and know my neighbors, many expect there could be a small amount of bandits rolling thru). Food is life, ammo is death. Tough decisions will have to be made.
Hunter gatherers do not recognise these imaginary lines called property rights.
The ones from Harvard do.
or not....
Net Neutrality actually means something. You can ignore all the bullshit around it, that's $$ speaking - the actual impact is protecting sites like ZH from being "shadow banned" and suffering "unfortunate bandwidth issues" when you try to visit them.
www.eff.org
By the way - you know that really nasty bill that everyone campaigned to defeat? CISPA?
Yep. Paid fuckers put it right back into the grist mill:
http://www.newsweek.com/meet-new-cispa-same-old-cispa-299375?piano_d=1
http://piratetimes.net/exclusive-a-sneak-peek-at-cispa-2015/
https://protectedtrust.com/cispa-reintroduced-congress-still-wont-improv...
This is why Government is broken in the USA: if a bill is defeated, they re-write a couple of paragraphs and shove it right back into the mill. And then again. And again. And if there's a popular bill supporting the vets, they'll shove it on a rider. And each time the lawyers, lobbyists and Congressmen make bank.
This is not how Law in the constitution was intended to work, and it's not how any sane legal system works. Any fuckwit can pass a law if the only threshold is to put it forward each session until the massive stacks of cash bribe people to pass it. NOT what a Republic is about.
Pork on bills as riders and this type of cynical legal bullshit is partly what killed the USA.
You got old and slow, time for a refresh.
Without the internet I wouldn't be reading the ZeroHedge newsletter.
the demise of the gatekeepers
The elites own the gatekeepers. Look at your Main Stream Media. This is the eilte's main gate keeper. MSM has done more harm to Americans than all the so called enemies this state has ever had.
Yes. The publishing houses have largely been in collusion with the state from the beginning. Certain independent content was always allowed thru to keep up appearances, but the press in America has been lorded over for a long long time.
Independent thinking is the enemy of central planning. The delusion is to believe better results will determine outcomes. The sheeple crave a leader to think for them. That craving destroys innovation. The great stupidity is to trust those who refuse to think to chose masters to think for them.
A limited republic was supposed to mitigate that last point of yours, alas, toilet paper. In the end, the most important republic is your mind. I've lost family and friends very young in their lives. I do believe what I say, FWIW, and am thankful for every day.
"the cost of adult content has plummeted to near-zero." Sounds like Chuck ought to know.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/in_determining094141.html
Google to change algo based on "facts" not links.
Sounds like google will now decide what is truth?
Just compare the available porn before and after the 'net. The choice is obvious.
The days of TV, newspapers, magazines, books and radio seem like the Dark Ages now, all those mediums were super controled . I got a small reminder of that today, I never watch TV or buy newspapers anymore, but I was at my gym today and just out nof curiosity picked up a copy of the Sunday Times (a "Newscorp" broadsheet Murdock rag) , was reading this piece about Putin , Strelkof and Ukraine that had this one liner casually slung in there .."MH17 which apparently was shot down by the rebels". Oh well thats it then , thanks for solving that little mystery for us all "Newscorp", no evidence or reasoning mind you, just a casual fait acompli, "because , well because we are journalists and we say so , oh and thats what our masters want you to believe". Unbelievable that they still think they can get away with that shit , although I suppose there must be a significant section of the older population it still works on.
It's factual because Brian Williams was there...
and barry is running in the other direction - barry will be regarded as the last of the dinosaurs 100 years from now
and having that fossil billary as the next President is so wrong and so out of the question - this command and control twat would make for the end of civilization
Unfortunately, this is not really happening. The Internet may have been from the beginning, and still is, a system for sharing information (Eeven Facebook can make that claim). However, its evolution and refinement can in most cases be characterized as centralization, control, and manipulation of that information flow for profit. Let's face it, aside from web sites like ZH ,most people are engaging the web through portals and sites which essentially do that. In extreme forms this evolution is now erroding the original value proposition of free information flow on the web. It says something about our society, which apparently has difficulty accepting the idea that a large scale social communications system can exist and have value without spawning corporations, overnight billionaires, record breaking IPO’s, constantly rising share prices, and mass surveillance opportunities.
Yes content is cheaper and you may have pay per view with major papers soon, and it may be written by a bot...lot's of territory covered here including "new rigging" so yes be thankful for sites like Zero Hedge, my blog added in there too and many other quality websites that go beyond what the press does at times. It's not the journalists' fault, as they get graded on the number of clicks they get to generate money from advertising.
This particular start up which the NYT and WSJ say they are in, will also have an arm that collects your data for sale too as to read the pay per views that are stated to be forthcoming, the 20 cent charge has to go to a credit card and like I said, maybe written by a bot afterall.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2015/03/major-us-newspapers-sign-up-and-invest.html
No doubt, this article is right on the spot, creators don't get paid much anymore.
what's the problem, medias pay producers to make products, products are made, whatever the % of the broadcasting efficiency utorrent vs cinema ticket or itunes/cd sold, tax is the missing link in the chain so every one got its money,
it is just now artists do not give a fuck about sales, they have media contracts to lock the revenues.... and lives show, wich is up to now, unhackable...
the model is changing, but money still flow in same direction, only trajectories changed.
to those artits complaining about internet stealing medias, fuck you, internet propagate your craps like it was impossible in vinyl/tape/cd times... now move your ass on stage and make the shows at those fancy 100$ price to get your bucks and go to hell.
anyway nothing good since 2000... those calling deadmaus an artist have gelly in head instead of brain .
I think arguably markets and market conditions have changed constantly since the beginning of markets. Just like introducing new species of plants or animals into an ecosystem, if they take hold, they change the system. Nobody thought to put a negative slant on CDs for ending cassettes, or Ipods for ending CDs, yet fortunes were made and lost off these technology driven market shifts. The Internet has morphed into a massive new constant in the market equation which has a big effect on the end value. It cannot be universally good or bad, only subjectively good or bad. If you did an analysis based purely on social/political shifts, the same is true. The access to vast amounts of information at everyone's fingertips was good for some, and for some it was bad. To the last point, I would say the the trend in information access is generally good, but I am not part of the 0.01%
The Internet is already obsolete.
"This piece was actually written by Brian Williams." - BW
Pretty naive article..."The cost of creation has fallen to zero"? Time is money. It still takes *time* to create content. You can see a lot of content being produced by people in their early 20s (students), who are living on borrowed money (time) or their parents money. Often once these people have to support themeselves you see their youtube channels dry up, often with a "goodbye" message.
These people were essentially giving away their time for free *to other people*.Its not free from them to create however; once they start having to pay down their loans they are in effect repaying for the time they used up. That "free" tutorial series the student did in 2011 may have used up $300 dollars of his student debt, money which he eventually has to pay back.
It always amazes me nobody realizes and speaks about that is also true the other way 'round:
The cost of creating and distributing disinformation has fallen to near-zero too
Isn't true: disinformation has to be laced with propaganda shaped around perceptions and exponentially increasing awareness.
Dispelling it only requires evidence. It's an asymmetric war.