While Brad's observation (below) is certainly true for the 'traditional'
media and records -- one-way media with centralistic, big producers --,
I don't agree with his extrapolation onto the Internet, because that's
a de-central 'all-way' medium with "prosumers" (producers are consumers,
and vice-versa): In fact, Internet features like MP3 and Gnutella are
on their way to *break* the monopolies of the "big labels" (music industry),
and enable *everyone* (not just the "big stars"!) to spread self-composed
music to a (world)wide audience. Hence the effect of the 'new' media is
rather the contrary of that of the 'traditional' media. (Obviously I'm
*not* talking of AOL et al.!)
More generally (about Selma's topic of creativity vs. money-making), I'd
like to mention a German project (also an e-mail list) called "Oekonux"
(="Oekonomie"+"Linux", economy+Linux), which discusses the generalization
of the Linux/GNU principle (free contribution and sharing of information
and resources) onto society as a whole (i.e. onto non-software fields of
the economy), in order to create a non-capitalist model of society.
Have a look at http://www.oekonux.org ...
Chris
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Brad McCormick wrote:
> On NPR All Things Considered a while back, there was a piece
> on the musicians who play in nightclubs and other places.
> It struck me as a parable of what new communication media
> in general tend to do to *increase* inequalities and to create
> ever higher "heights" for a few than were previously
> possible for anybody:
>
> Before the advent of phonograph records, and, especially,
> "LPs", a performer's maximum possible audience was limited
> to the number of persons who could be brought into
> the real acoustic range of his or her voice. There were
> many *small* audiences, and the very biggest audience
> was a relatively small multiple of the average. This meant
> a lot of work for a lot of good but not "stellar" performers
> to service all those separated little audiences. It
> also limited the top pay for the very best.
>
> You can already see how this story is going to end: The
> LP record enabled a very few to access immense audiences,
> and, correlatively, it vastly shrank the number
> of little isolated audiences which supported those who would
> never be good enough (or lucky enough or whatever) to
> gain the level of capitalization needed to get recorded.
>
> --
>
> Advances in communication
> media tend centrifugally to separate the few at the top
> ever further from the many, and to both: (1) raise the highest
> attainable "elevation" above the previous ceiling limit,
> and (2) increase the maximum number of the "many" who
> can be socially coordinated together.
>
> (Marshall McLuhan did not look forward with
> enthusiasm to the coming of "the global village"....)
