J-Sun
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- Joined
- Oct 23, 2008
- Messages
- 5,324
A Writing Revolution @ seedmagazine.com
This was linked from a page that I linked to on another thread but I just followed it out and it seemed interesting enough (if gravely flawed) to single out.
It's a nice rosy picture they paint of a new Athenian Golden Age and I sincerely and fervently hope something that impressive comes to pass.
But, to raise a quibble or two: it's kind of dismaying to see a couple of professors in a science mag mixing apples and oranges and leaving out some oranges while they're at it. By their current definition, anyone who ever published a letter to a newspaper or magazine was an author before Web 2.0 but they don't seem to count them and, conversely, I have "published" reviews on the front page of this site (when it had a front page) that were read by many times their threshold of readership qualification but it wasn't on Twitter/Facebook/blogs so it doesn't seem to count. Because it's on an old-fangledy Web 1.0 posting board? And what about Net 1.0 Usenet and IRC?
Carrying on, I find it ludicrous that they say, "Publishing by the few Athenian authors brought us drama, philosophy, science, mathematics, literature, and history. As readers, we consume. As authors, we create. Our society is changing from consumers to creators." The lack of discrimination implied by comparing Aeschylus and Sophocles to Joe and Jane Tweeter and the Oresteian trilogy to a tweet transcends my capacity to describe. And "re-tweeting" something that's going "viral" ain't exactly "creating".
I'm also disturbed by the casual aside of "many people are trading privacy for influence". In one sense, this is true but the net was once anonymous and still is to an extent and then there's trading privacy and trading privacy. Jack Vance, Greg Egan and Salinger, Pynchon, and Harper Lee and many other reclusive authors were "famous" as authors but still valued "privacy".
I'm also disturbed by some of the examples around the concept that "Public discussion creates a social conscience." Complaining online got someone fired. Well, perhaps that rude service was an exception to a rule and the employee didn't deserve to be fired. Even if they did, a complaint to a manager would have gotten the same result without humiliating the person in front of an indefinitely large audience and possibly further impairing their ability to get another job.
Also, there's a sort of "power to the people" motif that may be sadly mistaken. "Governments, businesses, and organizations must adapt to a population that wields increasing individual power." Actually, in a room full of randomly shouting people, none are likely to be heard and their "individual power" is nil. Worse, in the old days of a few writers, some with some talent could gain influence and could be heard but the threshold may be much higher and only the very very few writers may be heard above the din (to which we are all currently contributing). On the other hand, as many astroturf campaigns should have taught us and as Amazon's acquisition and treatment of places like Goodreads should tell us, the governments, businesses, and organizations are adapting very well to the new situation and, by shaping dialog with concealed power, may become even more powerful and influential than ever. For instance, even this very article's examples are "blogs, Facebook, and Twitter" which are (1) a format whose influence is controlled by a few large entities like blogger.com (which is in turn owned by Google) and (2,3) two large corporate entities. This doesn't exactly spell "power to the people" to me. And remember when everyone was going to have their own homepage and HTML was a simple markup language that anyone could learn rather than a full-tilt "web app" programming language with 67 sub-standards that no one but professional programmers paid by large corporations really understands all of any more? Remember when Usenet and IRC were powerful, distributed, and virtually uncensorable media of communications? So forgive me if I'm a little cynical regarding the forthcoming universal authorship and increased individual influence and flood of new Aeschyluses and Aristotles we're about to enjoy.
But, still, it was (obviously) a stimulating article to me and I thought others might be interested and/or incited to wield their individual influence regarding it.
This was linked from a page that I linked to on another thread but I just followed it out and it seemed interesting enough (if gravely flawed) to single out.
It's a nice rosy picture they paint of a new Athenian Golden Age and I sincerely and fervently hope something that impressive comes to pass.
But, to raise a quibble or two: it's kind of dismaying to see a couple of professors in a science mag mixing apples and oranges and leaving out some oranges while they're at it. By their current definition, anyone who ever published a letter to a newspaper or magazine was an author before Web 2.0 but they don't seem to count them and, conversely, I have "published" reviews on the front page of this site (when it had a front page) that were read by many times their threshold of readership qualification but it wasn't on Twitter/Facebook/blogs so it doesn't seem to count. Because it's on an old-fangledy Web 1.0 posting board? And what about Net 1.0 Usenet and IRC?
Carrying on, I find it ludicrous that they say, "Publishing by the few Athenian authors brought us drama, philosophy, science, mathematics, literature, and history. As readers, we consume. As authors, we create. Our society is changing from consumers to creators." The lack of discrimination implied by comparing Aeschylus and Sophocles to Joe and Jane Tweeter and the Oresteian trilogy to a tweet transcends my capacity to describe. And "re-tweeting" something that's going "viral" ain't exactly "creating".
I'm also disturbed by the casual aside of "many people are trading privacy for influence". In one sense, this is true but the net was once anonymous and still is to an extent and then there's trading privacy and trading privacy. Jack Vance, Greg Egan and Salinger, Pynchon, and Harper Lee and many other reclusive authors were "famous" as authors but still valued "privacy".
I'm also disturbed by some of the examples around the concept that "Public discussion creates a social conscience." Complaining online got someone fired. Well, perhaps that rude service was an exception to a rule and the employee didn't deserve to be fired. Even if they did, a complaint to a manager would have gotten the same result without humiliating the person in front of an indefinitely large audience and possibly further impairing their ability to get another job.
Also, there's a sort of "power to the people" motif that may be sadly mistaken. "Governments, businesses, and organizations must adapt to a population that wields increasing individual power." Actually, in a room full of randomly shouting people, none are likely to be heard and their "individual power" is nil. Worse, in the old days of a few writers, some with some talent could gain influence and could be heard but the threshold may be much higher and only the very very few writers may be heard above the din (to which we are all currently contributing). On the other hand, as many astroturf campaigns should have taught us and as Amazon's acquisition and treatment of places like Goodreads should tell us, the governments, businesses, and organizations are adapting very well to the new situation and, by shaping dialog with concealed power, may become even more powerful and influential than ever. For instance, even this very article's examples are "blogs, Facebook, and Twitter" which are (1) a format whose influence is controlled by a few large entities like blogger.com (which is in turn owned by Google) and (2,3) two large corporate entities. This doesn't exactly spell "power to the people" to me. And remember when everyone was going to have their own homepage and HTML was a simple markup language that anyone could learn rather than a full-tilt "web app" programming language with 67 sub-standards that no one but professional programmers paid by large corporations really understands all of any more? Remember when Usenet and IRC were powerful, distributed, and virtually uncensorable media of communications? So forgive me if I'm a little cynical regarding the forthcoming universal authorship and increased individual influence and flood of new Aeschyluses and Aristotles we're about to enjoy.
But, still, it was (obviously) a stimulating article to me and I thought others might be interested and/or incited to wield their individual influence regarding it.
