8 ms·

Sleeping Through a Revolution

102 points by qsymmachus 11y ago

aaron-lebo 11y ago
This is a really interesting piece and it is imperative that this generation of techies really takes to heart the war between tech enabling people and tech trapping people, but a quote in particular made me question a lot of the statements and notions presented. He quotes Thiel's "competition is for losers" statement, which is prominent in Zero to One, to suggest that Thiel doesn't believe in competition. But really Thiel is just saying that from a business perspective, you should be looking for non-competitive markets.
- Fomite 11y ago
  While true, the combination of the Thiel's beliefs ends up feeling a little bit "For me, but not for thee". Relying on the free hand of the market to take care of things depends on there being a market, but any given company is massively incentivized to distort the market as far as humanly possible.
gooseus 11y ago
Thought provoking on a lot of levels. I believe that the technology we're creating is cutting both ways. It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness. The opportunities that we've created that allow any given idea to go viral, become a killer app and make billionaires has distracted us from finding deeper ideals that could be shared to show us how to lead a more meaningful life and create a civilization worthy of stepping out to the stars. I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense to anyone else, but something has definitely been bothering me for awhile and I think articles like this one are starting to help me articulate it and at least let me know that I'm not alone. I very much appreciate that.
- kiba 11y ago
  It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness. Distraction is what you allow. I hardly have any notifications on my phone or my desktop or do any kind of 'social networking' as related to going on facebook and twitter.
  - _rpd 11y ago
    > Distraction is what you allow. Yes, the narrative that we are will-less slaves to our electronic devices is just as disrespectful as the conspiracy theorist shouting "Wake up Sheeple!"
- Kalium 11y ago
  You are echoing a notion that I see and hear regularly from a number of my more artistic, spiritually inclined friends. That technology is isolating us from one another, preventing people from connecting as we did in times past. Honestly? I think it's not true. In days of yore, people read newspapers or books to isolate themselves. Or whittled. Or knit. Or just looked busy. If anything has changed, it's that it is now possible to connect deeply to a person many thousands of miles away. Most of the connections in life are superficial, yes. That's true today and has been for centuries. My artistic and spiritual friends are, sad to say, mostly pining for a golden age that never existed.
  - bargl 11y ago
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've never been to a 3rd world country for an extended period of time. If I'm wrong I'd like to apologize for making this assumption to make the rest of my point, because you can easily step on the way back machine by moving someplace where only a few people have computers. During my time in Bolivia and Haiti I experience massive culture shock at the way people interact with their community. At night you can walk around the central plaza in the Okinawa Numero Uno (mind you this is a TINY town) and someone will find you to chat with you. In bigger towns (in Bolivia) people are friendly, because they have to interact to get directions, ask for a good place to eat, or just chat. There are community events ALL the time. Was it a golden age? No, I don't think so, but it was a time and culture where people KNEW their neighbors because if you want to stave off boredom you have to hang out with them to laugh, eat, drink, etc. I don't think technology has changed this per se, but instead that TV and the culture of entertainment that we have has changed this. I know that comparing the USA 30-50 years ago and Bolivia is an oversimplification, but there definitely was a culture difference before everyone had a cellphone in their pocket. It may not have been a golden age, but for some people it was a period where the risks were easier to understand. That said, I also think people were still able to find isolation who wanted it, the main difference is people who were seeking a way to fight boredom had much fewer ways to do that in their house by themselves 50 years ago.
chaostheory 11y ago
> So I want to explore the idea that the last 20 years of technological progress — the digital revolution — have devalued the role of the creative artist in our society I disagree. Technological progress has just mostly devalued the old institutions of middle men and gate keepers. Now anyone with a digital video camera, mic, and computer can become a star. They no longer need hollywood's or the record labels' permission
- daveloyall 11y ago
  New boss, same as the old boss. The would-be stars need Youtube's "permission", though actually I think this really means that the media company profits by the work of the artist more than the artist does.
  - chaostheory 11y ago
    Not quite. Getting Youtube's 'permission' is way easier and way faster than securing the same thing through old media companies. > actually I think this really means that the media company profits by the work of the artist more than the artist does. Can anyone really tell though, since the accounting methods of both Hollywood and the music industry is really shady where the numbers are just not available for anyone or even the artists themselves. With silicon valley this is a lot more transparent.
    - daveloyall 11y ago
      It took me FOREVER to dig this up. My memory is better than my browser history! Re: YouTube vs Artists: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8936257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8936257
      - chaostheory 11y ago
        Silicon Valley is a lesser evil. http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html There's another blog post I can't find about an artist not being able to get access to the exact sales of his music online from his record company, which didn't make sense to him since pretty much every online music servic make it available. Hollywood isn't any better. http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-return-of-the-jedi-hasnt-made-a-profit/ http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-re...
digler999 11y ago
> Competition is for suckers > If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly > recorded music revenues have fallen from $21 billion to $7 billion per year. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen from $65 billion in 2000 to $18 billion So Joe Schmoe could make a record and market it to the general public (read: get radio airplay) before the internet came and stole everything with their "monopolies" ? Anyone could start their own newspaper back then too ? There wasn't a huge barrier to entry, like, oh, buying your own printing press ? I'm not sympathetic whatsoever to "content creators" bellyaching stories about the good ole days when they had control of the monopolies. Information is free. If the only reason you were making money in 1995 was because HDDs weren't large enough to store hundreds of albums, or because a competing label couldn't afford payola to the radio stations, you never deserved the money you made in the first place. Companies back then solved the problem of information scarcity. The fact that there is no more scarcity doesn't entitle you to reparation.
PeterWhittaker 11y ago
Perhaps this is not revolution, but a return: For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. Labour was always cheap. This changed in the late 19th C and early 20th C. Perhaps 20th C costly labour was nothing but a blip, an oddity, and we are now returning to the mean? The article contains the line economic gains will flow to those who own the platform rather than to those who do the work which makes me think of Agatha Christie's comment about her youthful perspective I never thought I would be so poor as to not have live-in staff, or so rich as to have a car and driver.
- crpatino 11y ago
  > For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. I think you are extrapolating the experience of the 19th century industrialization into the distant past. There have always been poor people, but I think "labour" is a relatively recent concept. i.e. Medieval serfs had a place fixed in society. It was a lousy place, but a place still. It had more to do with lord-vassal relationship than in had to do with the calculus of labor's value added.
  - PeterWhittaker 11y ago
    Well, a more detailed comment from me would have expanded upon themes of reward, social mobility (which requires resources or connections or both), etc., etc. But as a quick comment, it serves. For example, consider serfs as examples of hardly paid at all: They made enough to survive, but even if they had surplus and managed to sell it for a luxury item or two, they stayed stuck in their fiefdoms, by and large, unless they had skills or talents both in demand and recognized, e.g., qualities for the priesthood, for becoming a mason, etc., or unless they fled and/or joined the military. I guess they key follow-on to both the original article and to Christie's comment is one disposable wealth and choice: For much of human history, most of us have had neither. For part of the 20th C, many of us have had both. Perhaps that is the return to the mean (that I honestly hope we are not experiencing - otherwise, my daughter's world will be far crappier than mine, regardless of the efforts of either of us, unless one of us should win the platform creation-and-ownership lottery).
CLGrimes 11y ago
While the article makes good points, I was wondering when I would see the smear campaign from the MPAA towards Google and the Silicon Valley: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150724/15501631756/smoking-gun-mpaa-emails-reveal-plan-to-run-anti-google-smear-campaign-via-today-show-wsj.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150724/15501631756/smoki...
scotchmi_st 11y ago
He had me until the bit comparing illegal movie downloads to terrorism and drugs, and how MegaUpload and Google are 'enablers' by allowing users to upload/search for copyright-infringing content. It's quite clear that he doesn't understand the nature of computers. Cory Doctorow has a great rebuttal of that argument in his talk on the coming war on general computationhttp://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html- http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html- "The important tests of whether or not a regulation is fit for a purpose are first whether it will work, and second whether or not it will, in the course of doing its work, have effects on everything else. If I wanted Congress, Parliament, or the E.U. to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles, and asked, “Can't we do something about this?", the answer would be “No". This is because we don't know how to make a wheel that is still generally useful for legitimate wheel applications, but useless to bad guys. We can all see that the general benefits of wheels are so profound that we'd be foolish to risk changing them in a foolish errand to stop bank robberies. Even if there were an epidemic of bank robberies—even if society were on the verge of collapse thanks to bank robberies—no-one would think that wheels were the right place to start solving our problems." Computers have no notion of what is 'good' content and what is 'bad' content, and we aren't yet able to teach them accurately the difference (even humans aren't able to tell 100% of the time).
- Kalium 11y ago
  A point well made. This article has all the hallmarks of a person who understands that wheels are powerful and that the people who design and engineer wheels are clever. Yet, this person also fails to understand that wheels have limits. Only that clever people can do impressive things, therefore they should obviously be capable of doing a particular clever thing. The more I read, the more I approach the conclusion that the author should change his name to Rip van Winkle.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  This (and beautifully stated I might add). If you'll forgive the simile - Blaming a search engine for making bad content accessible is ridiculous. I did enjoy the paypal mafia picture though.
kndyry 11y ago
The author at several points seems to dither between an insightful consideration of the technological present, and what I can only quantify as an underlying fear indicative of the very sleepiness against which we're being warned. For example: > My deeper question comes from my position as a professor here for the last 12 years, where I have watched the lure of Silicon Valley grow stronger. If the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building addictive apps rather than making great journalism, important films, or literature that survives the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished? Might not have Rip said, on the day of his return to waking life, "if the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building democracy rather than making great works in the name of the monarchy, an institution that is sure to survive the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished for lack of grace?" One cannot claim that the future is being misunderstood because it does not look like one's past. Yes, the increasing ubiquity of processing machines has altered society. These are still early days and the changes are so new, it's a bit like bumbling around in the dark. It seems short-sighted to assume that the current state is in any way permanent or indicative of future states. > I was lucky enough to be involved with some artists like Bob Dylan, The Band, George Harrison, and Martin Scorsese, whose work will surely stand the test of time. I’m not sure I know what the implications are of the role-model shift from rebel filmmaker to software coder. Neither are we. Something, however, is quite certain: whatever the implications, the future is coming and calling it wrong because it is incongruous with the past is to miss it.
- themartorana 11y ago
  I'm not sure where to differentiate between the rebel filmmaker and the rebel software application developer - at least not in his analogy. The rebel artist is there to disrupt social norms through a particular medium. In his time, anti-Vietnam messages were a big one. Now apps like Uber aim to disrupt social norms through the software medium. (I will argue all day that software is art, BTW.) Just because the author doesn't recognize the movement personally doesn't mean it has really changed all that much. (P.S. All of author's heroes listed are rich. I fully believe both art and riches can be pursued at the same time, but being paid well for doing what you love is the same as it's always been.)
walterbell 11y ago
> As my colleague Ethan Zuckerman said, “It’s obvious now what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble.” Can we find role models who were successful at achieving their "brave and noble" social goals? We can draw upon centuries of negotiation between labor and rent seekers. > Your generation does not need to surrender to some sort of techno-determinist future. Let’s try and “rewire” (Ethan’s term) the Internet. The article mentions SOPA but not TPP/TTIP/TISA/RECP which will "rewire" the Internet, computing infrastructure and more. Caution is warranted when listening to rewirers bearing gifts.
brock_r 11y ago
Ironically, the author seems like he is the Rip Van Winkle here...
shkkmo 11y ago
In many ways I think this article is exploiting a false dichotomy that has always bothered me: Libertarianism vs. Communalism. I've believed for a long that both Rand and Marx were very important thinkers who both fundamentally believed in the freedom of the individual: Freedom from control by 'Capital' and freedom from control by the 'Government'. I get worried as I see the ever tighter cooperation between capital and government in our society. We risk approaching a world that both Marx and Rand would have been united in opposition of. At the same time, I have hope. By freely choosing to cooperate, choosing to do what we love, by choosing to give whatever we can back to the world, by choosing to support free software and free platforms, we have shown that we have the opportunity to outpace the ability of capital and government to react to this revolution. We'll see where things go. I'm sure it'll be interesting.
- sounds 11y ago
  If I may make an even stronger statement, to hopefully spark an interesting conversation: I have hope. Spontaneous cooperation between equal peers which unintentionally upsets the status quo and becomes the inflection point for political change for the good has been a longstanding tradition. The requirements are: 1. Equal peers who abide basic human rights such that cooperation is possible. 2. Pent-up desire for political change for the good which needs a catalyst/release valve. 3. Critical mass of willing participants who, if they discover new status quo, can immediately grasp its significance. (a.k.a. The Innovator's Dilemma) 4. Method of communication which enables #3 to cause the political change.
  - shkkmo 11y ago
    I don't personally have much faith in political change as a starting point. Political change may happen. I suspect it will be the results of a paradigm shift, not the cause of one. I do agree that innovations in communication, especially in the area of collective decision making, are key.
    - sounds 11y ago
      Ok, I apologize if it sounded like political change was the starting point. (Good! I obviously need to clarify!) Political change is definitely the result -- but media outlets frequently claim it is all four: cause, method, effect, and definition. (Of the paradigm shift.) Examples: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27/us-markets-china-stocks-idUSKCN0Q10KE20150727 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27/us-markets-china-s... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/27/supreme-court-bush-protest-speech/9172707/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/27/supre...
sudioStudio64 11y ago
He makes some really good points about the way that the capital owning classes actually don't want greater democratic enfranchisement. He also makes some great points about how there doesn't seem to be as much inclination towards revolutionary art. As people come to grips with the decline of American power and begin to realize that, in fact, we aren't free or special or really living up to any of the high ideals that are described in some of our founding documents and rhetoric you will see more arguments like these. At the root of his critique is that he really does believe that we are special and this place can be magic. It isn't and it won't be. EDIT: Libertarianism is a dying hooker licking 9V alkaline batteries for that metallic taste of excitement every time it gets to posit a counterfactual notion about some basic human tenant. It's a foolish sounding semi-sorta ideology when espoused by the middle class who are algorithmically incapable of seeing any benefit from it's implementation and a smug blanket of self-serving satisfaction for the wealthy who use it to make their social position intellectually palatable in a "dinner party" conversational sense. While the wealthy capitalists in this article may really entertain ludicrous thoughts of building a treehouse-fort-island where they are the biggest bully, they don't do so in any way that might upset their own apple cart's on the way to markets created and policed by a political process that they go out of their way to openly despise but are intravenously connected to in ways that conjoined twins sharing a single heart would consider too close for comfort. Libertarianism's philosopher's are the unpopular clowns at the children's birthday party of society hoping that bending their "business innovation's" into balloon animals will convince the starving attendees to actually enjoy watching them eat all of the cake. "Look it's a lion! Rawr!" EDIT EDIT: COME ON. You know that's good. Come on!
- kiba 11y ago
  Democracy doesn't necessarily lead to freedom. It's dependent on the voters making the correct decision on who to elect. There's a reason why people hate our politicians.
  - sudioStudio64 11y ago
    In fact I think that you can have a functional Democracy without any freedom. That's kind of what I mean. I don't think that people are interested in freedom and I don't mean that to sound like a tea party fan. I just think that this place wouldn't be the way it is if people were genuinely interested in freedom...in fact it's such a nebulous term that it's almost meaningless. Remember in Braveheart where Mel WahtsHisFAce rides in front of the soldiers waiting to go into battle to establish yet another monarchy, "What will you do without freedom?" That's a great summation of Americans arguing about freedom during an election cycle. We are an open society. We are a little d democratic society. I don't think that we are a free society. Sorry for the blahblah blah stuff. It's just been on my mind a lot for some reason. Back to the salt mine.
trhway 11y ago
well, the trick was the same as usual - under the guise of protecting the "struggling artist/creator" the public was sold a law - DMCA (and supporting ideology&moral) - which main purpose and function is to protect the platforms who as the result of it got to exploit the "creators" instead of the Studios/labels who did it in the pre-Internet/pre-DMCA time.
nipponese 11y ago
I thought the google smear campaign had already been exposed. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/26/1224223/plan-to-run-anti-google-smear-campaign-revealed-in-mpaa-emails http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/26/1224223/plan-to-run-...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
eridius 11y ago
> Since [...] 2000, global recorded music revenues have fallen from $21 billion to $7 billion per year. [...] So where did the money go? Two places: into the pockets of Digital Monopolists and Digital Thieves. The author here is making an absolutely incredible assumption here, which is that the decline in revenue for the entertainment industry is somehow fundamentally wrong and must be caused by bad people. But it's far more likely that the revenue seen by the entertainment industry leading up to 2000 was an aberration, caused by a very brief window of time where technology enabled mass production and distribution by corporations without easy copying or sharing by individuals. But if you go further back than 2000[1], I'm sure you'll find that their revenue was much lower not all that long ago. I'd be very surprised if that $21 billion number didn't represent their all-time peak, meaning 2000 wasn't the start of the decline, it was actually just the end of a bubble. [1] I'm having trouble finding that data myself, anyone know where to look? Addendum: It turns out the worldwide music industry revenues actually haven't fallen since 2000. Which I guess explains why the article explicitly said "recorded music". According to http://www.businessinsider.com/music-industry-revenues-chart-2014-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/music-industry-revenues-chart..., the worldwide music industry revenues in 2013 are about the same as in 2000 [2]. But what's actually happened is that most of that money is now coming from tours instead of recorded music [3]. This further reinforces my "bubble" argument. Before the advent of easily-produced recorded music, the music industry revenue must have been mostly live music. So the bubble here is just the short period of time when the music industry was able to make a killing on mass-produced recorded music sales. But that bubble is over, we're back to the industry needing to earn its money from live music and other secondary sources. But of course the music industry doesn't want to admit that this is a bubble. They want to pretend that the business model of selling recorded music is sacred and must be protected by law, regardless of the consequences. [2]: It's 3% lower, but that's pretty meaningless. [3]: It says 36% of the revenue is recorded music.
maus42 11y ago
The author has some good insight on many things, but the insight is mixed up with ...something else, and that makes a conflated spaghetti. For example, why I and most of people I know opposed SOPA wasn't exactly because of piracy; I'd remind that opposition included also organizations like Wikipedia, EFF, ACLU, HRW and Reporters without Borders. Most of the confusion seems to be there because being a content creator affects his viewpoint... which is understandable. But in a grand scheme of things, the future of professions based on copyright is quite minor issue compared to the other problems of technological revolution and politics intertwined with it.
gloriousduke 11y ago
> If the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building addictive apps rather than making great journalism, important films, or literature that survives the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished? The opportunity to create art still exists. Distribution channels are more varied now; they're more inclusive and perhaps (ironically?) less conducive to middle class salaries. But since when has creating art ever been about financial reimbursement? You're either creating or you aren't. The incentive exists for those that feel one, for those that have to create or go insane. If you "were going to be a novelist" but decided to be a programmer or an economist because you wanted to make money, well... In the words of Shia Labeouf: "just do it."

102 points by qsymmachus 11y ago

This is a really interesting piece and it is imperative that this generation of techies really takes to heart the war between tech enabling people and tech trapping people, but a quote in particular made me question a lot of the statements and notions presented. He quotes Thiel's "competition is for losers" statement, which is prominent in Zero to One, to suggest that Thiel doesn't believe in competition. But really Thiel is just saying that from a business perspective, you should be looking for non-competitive markets.

Fomite 11y ago
While true, the combination of the Thiel's beliefs ends up feeling a little bit "For me, but not for thee". Relying on the free hand of the market to take care of things depends on there being a market, but any given company is massively incentivized to distort the market as far as humanly possible.

gooseus 11y ago

Thought provoking on a lot of levels. I believe that the technology we're creating is cutting both ways. It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness. The opportunities that we've created that allow any given idea to go viral, become a killer app and make billionaires has distracted us from finding deeper ideals that could be shared to show us how to lead a more meaningful life and create a civilization worthy of stepping out to the stars. I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense to anyone else, but something has definitely been bothering me for awhile and I think articles like this one are starting to help me articulate it and at least let me know that I'm not alone. I very much appreciate that.

kiba 11y ago
It has allowed us to become more connected, but it seems that connection is at the shallowest level and has resulted in a disconnection from our deeper selves as the added distractions take energy away from self-reflection and self-awareness. Distraction is what you allow. I hardly have any notifications on my phone or my desktop or do any kind of 'social networking' as related to going on facebook and twitter.
- _rpd 11y ago
  > Distraction is what you allow. Yes, the narrative that we are will-less slaves to our electronic devices is just as disrespectful as the conspiracy theorist shouting "Wake up Sheeple!"
Kalium 11y ago
You are echoing a notion that I see and hear regularly from a number of my more artistic, spiritually inclined friends. That technology is isolating us from one another, preventing people from connecting as we did in times past. Honestly? I think it's not true. In days of yore, people read newspapers or books to isolate themselves. Or whittled. Or knit. Or just looked busy. If anything has changed, it's that it is now possible to connect deeply to a person many thousands of miles away. Most of the connections in life are superficial, yes. That's true today and has been for centuries. My artistic and spiritual friends are, sad to say, mostly pining for a golden age that never existed.
- bargl 11y ago
  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've never been to a 3rd world country for an extended period of time. If I'm wrong I'd like to apologize for making this assumption to make the rest of my point, because you can easily step on the way back machine by moving someplace where only a few people have computers. During my time in Bolivia and Haiti I experience massive culture shock at the way people interact with their community. At night you can walk around the central plaza in the Okinawa Numero Uno (mind you this is a TINY town) and someone will find you to chat with you. In bigger towns (in Bolivia) people are friendly, because they have to interact to get directions, ask for a good place to eat, or just chat. There are community events ALL the time. Was it a golden age? No, I don't think so, but it was a time and culture where people KNEW their neighbors because if you want to stave off boredom you have to hang out with them to laugh, eat, drink, etc. I don't think technology has changed this per se, but instead that TV and the culture of entertainment that we have has changed this. I know that comparing the USA 30-50 years ago and Bolivia is an oversimplification, but there definitely was a culture difference before everyone had a cellphone in their pocket. It may not have been a golden age, but for some people it was a period where the risks were easier to understand. That said, I also think people were still able to find isolation who wanted it, the main difference is people who were seeking a way to fight boredom had much fewer ways to do that in their house by themselves 50 years ago.

chaostheory 11y ago

> So I want to explore the idea that the last 20 years of technological progress — the digital revolution — have devalued the role of the creative artist in our society I disagree. Technological progress has just mostly devalued the old institutions of middle men and gate keepers. Now anyone with a digital video camera, mic, and computer can become a star. They no longer need hollywood's or the record labels' permission

daveloyall 11y ago
New boss, same as the old boss. The would-be stars need Youtube's "permission", though actually I think this really means that the media company profits by the work of the artist more than the artist does.
- chaostheory 11y ago
  Not quite. Getting Youtube's 'permission' is way easier and way faster than securing the same thing through old media companies. > actually I think this really means that the media company profits by the work of the artist more than the artist does. Can anyone really tell though, since the accounting methods of both Hollywood and the music industry is really shady where the numbers are just not available for anyone or even the artists themselves. With silicon valley this is a lot more transparent.
  - daveloyall 11y ago
    It took me FOREVER to dig this up. My memory is better than my browser history! Re: YouTube vs Artists: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8936257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8936257
    - chaostheory 11y ago
      Silicon Valley is a lesser evil. http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html http://www.gerryhemingway.com/piracy2.html There's another blog post I can't find about an artist not being able to get access to the exact sales of his music online from his record company, which didn't make sense to him since pretty much every online music servic make it available. Hollywood isn't any better. http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-return-of-the-jedi-hasnt-made-a-profit/ http://www.slashfilm.com/lucasfilm-tells-darth-vader-that-re...

digler999 11y ago

> Competition is for suckers > If you want to create and capture lasting value, look to build a monopoly > recorded music revenues have fallen from $21 billion to $7 billion per year. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen from $65 billion in 2000 to $18 billion So Joe Schmoe could make a record and market it to the general public (read: get radio airplay) before the internet came and stole everything with their "monopolies" ? Anyone could start their own newspaper back then too ? There wasn't a huge barrier to entry, like, oh, buying your own printing press ? I'm not sympathetic whatsoever to "content creators" bellyaching stories about the good ole days when they had control of the monopolies. Information is free. If the only reason you were making money in 1995 was because HDDs weren't large enough to store hundreds of albums, or because a competing label couldn't afford payola to the radio stations, you never deserved the money you made in the first place. Companies back then solved the problem of information scarcity. The fact that there is no more scarcity doesn't entitle you to reparation.

PeterWhittaker 11y ago

Perhaps this is not revolution, but a return: For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. Labour was always cheap. This changed in the late 19th C and early 20th C. Perhaps 20th C costly labour was nothing but a blip, an oddity, and we are now returning to the mean? The article contains the line economic gains will flow to those who own the platform rather than to those who do the work which makes me think of Agatha Christie's comment about her youthful perspective I never thought I would be so poor as to not have live-in staff, or so rich as to have a car and driver.

crpatino 11y ago
> For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. I think you are extrapolating the experience of the 19th century industrialization into the distant past. There have always been poor people, but I think "labour" is a relatively recent concept. i.e. Medieval serfs had a place fixed in society. It was a lousy place, but a place still. It had more to do with lord-vassal relationship than in had to do with the calculus of labor's value added.
- PeterWhittaker 11y ago
  Well, a more detailed comment from me would have expanded upon themes of reward, social mobility (which requires resources or connections or both), etc., etc. But as a quick comment, it serves. For example, consider serfs as examples of hardly paid at all: They made enough to survive, but even if they had surplus and managed to sell it for a luxury item or two, they stayed stuck in their fiefdoms, by and large, unless they had skills or talents both in demand and recognized, e.g., qualities for the priesthood, for becoming a mason, etc., or unless they fled and/or joined the military. I guess they key follow-on to both the original article and to Christie's comment is one disposable wealth and choice: For much of human history, most of us have had neither. For part of the 20th C, many of us have had both. Perhaps that is the return to the mean (that I honestly hope we are not experiencing - otherwise, my daughter's world will be far crappier than mine, regardless of the efforts of either of us, unless one of us should win the platform creation-and-ownership lottery).

CLGrimes 11y ago

While the article makes good points, I was wondering when I would see the smear campaign from the MPAA towards Google and the Silicon Valley: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150724/15501631756/smoking-gun-mpaa-emails-reveal-plan-to-run-anti-google-smear-campaign-via-today-show-wsj.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150724/15501631756/smoki...

scotchmi_st 11y ago

He had me until the bit comparing illegal movie downloads to terrorism and drugs, and how MegaUpload and Google are 'enablers' by allowing users to upload/search for copyright-infringing content. It's quite clear that he doesn't understand the nature of computers. Cory Doctorow has a great rebuttal of that argument in his talk on the coming war on general computationhttp://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html- http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html- "The important tests of whether or not a regulation is fit for a purpose are first whether it will work, and second whether or not it will, in the course of doing its work, have effects on everything else. If I wanted Congress, Parliament, or the E.U. to regulate a wheel, it's unlikely I'd succeed. If I turned up, pointed out that bank robbers always make their escape on wheeled vehicles, and asked, “Can't we do something about this?", the answer would be “No". This is because we don't know how to make a wheel that is still generally useful for legitimate wheel applications, but useless to bad guys. We can all see that the general benefits of wheels are so profound that we'd be foolish to risk changing them in a foolish errand to stop bank robberies. Even if there were an epidemic of bank robberies—even if society were on the verge of collapse thanks to bank robberies—no-one would think that wheels were the right place to start solving our problems." Computers have no notion of what is 'good' content and what is 'bad' content, and we aren't yet able to teach them accurately the difference (even humans aren't able to tell 100% of the time).

Kalium 11y ago
A point well made. This article has all the hallmarks of a person who understands that wheels are powerful and that the people who design and engineer wheels are clever. Yet, this person also fails to understand that wheels have limits. Only that clever people can do impressive things, therefore they should obviously be capable of doing a particular clever thing. The more I read, the more I approach the conclusion that the author should change his name to Rip van Winkle.
- deleted 11y ago
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hardwaresofton 11y ago
This (and beautifully stated I might add). If you'll forgive the simile - Blaming a search engine for making bad content accessible is ridiculous. I did enjoy the paypal mafia picture though.

kndyry 11y ago

The author at several points seems to dither between an insightful consideration of the technological present, and what I can only quantify as an underlying fear indicative of the very sleepiness against which we're being warned. For example: > My deeper question comes from my position as a professor here for the last 12 years, where I have watched the lure of Silicon Valley grow stronger. If the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building addictive apps rather than making great journalism, important films, or literature that survives the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished? Might not have Rip said, on the day of his return to waking life, "if the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building democracy rather than making great works in the name of the monarchy, an institution that is sure to survive the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished for lack of grace?" One cannot claim that the future is being misunderstood because it does not look like one's past. Yes, the increasing ubiquity of processing machines has altered society. These are still early days and the changes are so new, it's a bit like bumbling around in the dark. It seems short-sighted to assume that the current state is in any way permanent or indicative of future states. > I was lucky enough to be involved with some artists like Bob Dylan, The Band, George Harrison, and Martin Scorsese, whose work will surely stand the test of time. I’m not sure I know what the implications are of the role-model shift from rebel filmmaker to software coder. Neither are we. Something, however, is quite certain: whatever the implications, the future is coming and calling it wrong because it is incongruous with the past is to miss it.

themartorana 11y ago
I'm not sure where to differentiate between the rebel filmmaker and the rebel software application developer - at least not in his analogy. The rebel artist is there to disrupt social norms through a particular medium. In his time, anti-Vietnam messages were a big one. Now apps like Uber aim to disrupt social norms through the software medium. (I will argue all day that software is art, BTW.) Just because the author doesn't recognize the movement personally doesn't mean it has really changed all that much. (P.S. All of author's heroes listed are rich. I fully believe both art and riches can be pursued at the same time, but being paid well for doing what you love is the same as it's always been.)

walterbell 11y ago

> As my colleague Ethan Zuckerman said, “It’s obvious now what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble.” Can we find role models who were successful at achieving their "brave and noble" social goals? We can draw upon centuries of negotiation between labor and rent seekers. > Your generation does not need to surrender to some sort of techno-determinist future. Let’s try and “rewire” (Ethan’s term) the Internet. The article mentions SOPA but not TPP/TTIP/TISA/RECP which will "rewire" the Internet, computing infrastructure and more. Caution is warranted when listening to rewirers bearing gifts.

brock_r 11y ago

Ironically, the author seems like he is the Rip Van Winkle here...

shkkmo 11y ago

In many ways I think this article is exploiting a false dichotomy that has always bothered me: Libertarianism vs. Communalism. I've believed for a long that both Rand and Marx were very important thinkers who both fundamentally believed in the freedom of the individual: Freedom from control by 'Capital' and freedom from control by the 'Government'. I get worried as I see the ever tighter cooperation between capital and government in our society. We risk approaching a world that both Marx and Rand would have been united in opposition of. At the same time, I have hope. By freely choosing to cooperate, choosing to do what we love, by choosing to give whatever we can back to the world, by choosing to support free software and free platforms, we have shown that we have the opportunity to outpace the ability of capital and government to react to this revolution. We'll see where things go. I'm sure it'll be interesting.

sounds 11y ago
If I may make an even stronger statement, to hopefully spark an interesting conversation: I have hope. Spontaneous cooperation between equal peers which unintentionally upsets the status quo and becomes the inflection point for political change for the good has been a longstanding tradition. The requirements are: 1. Equal peers who abide basic human rights such that cooperation is possible. 2. Pent-up desire for political change for the good which needs a catalyst/release valve. 3. Critical mass of willing participants who, if they discover new status quo, can immediately grasp its significance. (a.k.a. The Innovator's Dilemma) 4. Method of communication which enables #3 to cause the political change.
- shkkmo 11y ago
  I don't personally have much faith in political change as a starting point. Political change may happen. I suspect it will be the results of a paradigm shift, not the cause of one. I do agree that innovations in communication, especially in the area of collective decision making, are key.
  - sounds 11y ago
    Ok, I apologize if it sounded like political change was the starting point. (Good! I obviously need to clarify!) Political change is definitely the result -- but media outlets frequently claim it is all four: cause, method, effect, and definition. (Of the paradigm shift.) Examples: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27/us-markets-china-stocks-idUSKCN0Q10KE20150727 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/27/us-markets-china-s... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/business/economy/26inquiry... http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/27/supreme-court-bush-protest-speech/9172707/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/05/27/supre...

sudioStudio64 11y ago

He makes some really good points about the way that the capital owning classes actually don't want greater democratic enfranchisement. He also makes some great points about how there doesn't seem to be as much inclination towards revolutionary art. As people come to grips with the decline of American power and begin to realize that, in fact, we aren't free or special or really living up to any of the high ideals that are described in some of our founding documents and rhetoric you will see more arguments like these. At the root of his critique is that he really does believe that we are special and this place can be magic. It isn't and it won't be. EDIT: Libertarianism is a dying hooker licking 9V alkaline batteries for that metallic taste of excitement every time it gets to posit a counterfactual notion about some basic human tenant. It's a foolish sounding semi-sorta ideology when espoused by the middle class who are algorithmically incapable of seeing any benefit from it's implementation and a smug blanket of self-serving satisfaction for the wealthy who use it to make their social position intellectually palatable in a "dinner party" conversational sense. While the wealthy capitalists in this article may really entertain ludicrous thoughts of building a treehouse-fort-island where they are the biggest bully, they don't do so in any way that might upset their own apple cart's on the way to markets created and policed by a political process that they go out of their way to openly despise but are intravenously connected to in ways that conjoined twins sharing a single heart would consider too close for comfort. Libertarianism's philosopher's are the unpopular clowns at the children's birthday party of society hoping that bending their "business innovation's" into balloon animals will convince the starving attendees to actually enjoy watching them eat all of the cake. "Look it's a lion! Rawr!" EDIT EDIT: COME ON. You know that's good. Come on!

kiba 11y ago
Democracy doesn't necessarily lead to freedom. It's dependent on the voters making the correct decision on who to elect. There's a reason why people hate our politicians.
- sudioStudio64 11y ago
  In fact I think that you can have a functional Democracy without any freedom. That's kind of what I mean. I don't think that people are interested in freedom and I don't mean that to sound like a tea party fan. I just think that this place wouldn't be the way it is if people were genuinely interested in freedom...in fact it's such a nebulous term that it's almost meaningless. Remember in Braveheart where Mel WahtsHisFAce rides in front of the soldiers waiting to go into battle to establish yet another monarchy, "What will you do without freedom?" That's a great summation of Americans arguing about freedom during an election cycle. We are an open society. We are a little d democratic society. I don't think that we are a free society. Sorry for the blahblah blah stuff. It's just been on my mind a lot for some reason. Back to the salt mine.

trhway 11y ago

well, the trick was the same as usual - under the guise of protecting the "struggling artist/creator" the public was sold a law - DMCA (and supporting ideology&moral) - which main purpose and function is to protect the platforms who as the result of it got to exploit the "creators" instead of the Studios/labels who did it in the pre-Internet/pre-DMCA time.

nipponese 11y ago

I thought the google smear campaign had already been exposed. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/26/1224223/plan-to-run-anti-google-smear-campaign-revealed-in-mpaa-emails http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/07/26/1224223/plan-to-run-...

deleted 11y ago

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eridius 11y ago

> Since [...] 2000, global recorded music revenues have fallen from $21 billion to $7 billion per year. [...] So where did the money go? Two places: into the pockets of Digital Monopolists and Digital Thieves. The author here is making an absolutely incredible assumption here, which is that the decline in revenue for the entertainment industry is somehow fundamentally wrong and must be caused by bad people. But it's far more likely that the revenue seen by the entertainment industry leading up to 2000 was an aberration, caused by a very brief window of time where technology enabled mass production and distribution by corporations without easy copying or sharing by individuals. But if you go further back than 2000[1], I'm sure you'll find that their revenue was much lower not all that long ago. I'd be very surprised if that $21 billion number didn't represent their all-time peak, meaning 2000 wasn't the start of the decline, it was actually just the end of a bubble. [1] I'm having trouble finding that data myself, anyone know where to look? Addendum: It turns out the worldwide music industry revenues actually haven't fallen since 2000. Which I guess explains why the article explicitly said "recorded music". According to http://www.businessinsider.com/music-industry-revenues-chart-2014-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/music-industry-revenues-chart..., the worldwide music industry revenues in 2013 are about the same as in 2000 [2]. But what's actually happened is that most of that money is now coming from tours instead of recorded music [3]. This further reinforces my "bubble" argument. Before the advent of easily-produced recorded music, the music industry revenue must have been mostly live music. So the bubble here is just the short period of time when the music industry was able to make a killing on mass-produced recorded music sales. But that bubble is over, we're back to the industry needing to earn its money from live music and other secondary sources. But of course the music industry doesn't want to admit that this is a bubble. They want to pretend that the business model of selling recorded music is sacred and must be protected by law, regardless of the consequences. [2]: It's 3% lower, but that's pretty meaningless. [3]: It says 36% of the revenue is recorded music.

maus42 11y ago

The author has some good insight on many things, but the insight is mixed up with ...something else, and that makes a conflated spaghetti. For example, why I and most of people I know opposed SOPA wasn't exactly because of piracy; I'd remind that opposition included also organizations like Wikipedia, EFF, ACLU, HRW and Reporters without Borders. Most of the confusion seems to be there because being a content creator affects his viewpoint... which is understandable. But in a grand scheme of things, the future of professions based on copyright is quite minor issue compared to the other problems of technological revolution and politics intertwined with it.

gloriousduke 11y ago

> If the best and the brightest of you are drawn to building addictive apps rather than making great journalism, important films, or literature that survives the test of time, will we as a society be ultimately impoverished? The opportunity to create art still exists. Distribution channels are more varied now; they're more inclusive and perhaps (ironically?) less conducive to middle class salaries. But since when has creating art ever been about financial reimbursement? You're either creating or you aren't. The incentive exists for those that feel one, for those that have to create or go insane. If you "were going to be a novelist" but decided to be a programmer or an economist because you wanted to make money, well... In the words of Shia Labeouf: "just do it."