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The end of paid content, the future of freedom of expression + free expressions
For a brief period in history, we have lived in an era of paid content. How did this happen, why did it happen — and most of all: why will this soon end?
Noam Chomsky has estimated that humans first created language about 75,000 years ago. For most of the last 75 millenia, language was simply spoken. Therefore, messages were usually communicated directly, or they were passed by messengers. As such, they were always colored by interpretation — the recipient of a message would have to trust that the messenger was passing on a “true” representation of facts. In contrast, paintings — such as the cave paintings in Lascaux — are in a sense “direct” messages from their “authors”.
Later, messages in a codified written language were also made freely available — for example: the “Code of Hammurabi”.
This principle of freely available information continued throughout most of history — my hunch is that for most of history, civilizations were by and large isolated from one another, and they primarily came in contact with one another primarily either through individual travelers, mostly messengers and traders, or through warfare in which soldiers fought basically as slaves in order for megalomaniacal rulers to subdue more people.
It is in this colonial tradition that most of what we refer to as “news” was probably first created. The advantage of a written account of battles or similar current conditions in far off countries enabled rulers to get a direct account from far away, just as viewing the Lascaux cave painting today also gives us a direct representation from a time in the distant past.
Therefore, for several thousand years, people were trained (and paid) to create such written accounts and to deliver them to rulers and wealthy merchants to keep them up-to-date. This is, however an anomaly… which came to a more or less abrupt end with the invention of the Internet and other technologies used in coordination with the Internet — such as computers, digital cameras, telephones, etc. — that are so easy to use that they can be used by virtually anyone. Today, no one needs so much as a high school education in order to use a wide array of information & communications technology.
Yet you may also notice that no one needs so much as a high school education to use a hammer, and still we pay carpenters for their work — so even if all of the so-called technological costs have been reduced to almost zero, creating content is still work and therefore content creators should get paid, right? Wrong.
To explain why that is, it helps to consider why humans created language in the first place: to communicate ideas. People want to share ideas… — and for that matter: not only people.
The vast majority life forms have evolved to become beings with an innate desire to communicate. We all want others to pay attention to us, and therefore we go to great expense to receive an audience for the information we want to share. Today, billions and billions of people are competing for my attention… and with that amount of competition, profits tend towards zero extremely fast — for all practical purposes: immediately.
Many years ago, Esther Dyson wrote a very insightful article about how information markets work. She made a very good point: that content producers will not be able to earn much money by creating content that is virtually freely available. She also made another point: That to earn money from content, it would be necessary to restrict access to other goods or services which are essentially complements to the freely available content. That worked for a time, but my hunch is that it has waned drastically — people no longer need packages or bundles which are part free, part paid. Basically: there is no longer any market for content producers to sell content.
Instead, today there is only a market for content selection… — and this is also completely natural. The reason why birds sing, the reason why flowers bloom, the reason why apples grow on trees is to scream out “select me!” The bird want to find another bird and yet not a cat. The flowers wants to attract a been and yet not a deer. The apple want us to eat it and yet not have its seeds end up in landfill. Evolution is all about this kind of natural selection (which is — I think — a different natural selection than the kind of natural selection Charles Darwin described).
If it is true that to a hammer everything looks like a nail, then it is nonetheless also true that life forms which will survive in the long run will be more intelligent than hammers.
Humans are social animals, and therefore we developed language to function socially. We use language to select ideas — and words are our natural units of exchange. In order to attain my audience, you will need to use my words. 
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Tagged communication, content, economics, economy, expression, expressions, free, freedom, information, language, market, paid, pay, technology
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Nils Landgren wins Sir George Martin Music Award
Nils Landgren is a trombonist, singer, bandmaster, arranger, professor, concert organiser, and an inexhaustible ambassador for Swedish music around the world. His multi-facetted musical life, together with his open approach to music, has led to exciting cooperation with a large number of musicians and artists. He has released over twenty albums, several of which were made together with his own band “Funk Unit”. He is often seen in roles such as artistic director for big bands and festivals, producer for other artists, and project manager for various projects both locally and globally.
The governing board for the Sir George Martin Music Award also underscored that:
Just as George Martin once started “The British Invasion”, Nils Landgren has led a Swedish jazz wave. Nils Landgren is a diverse, bold, and enthusiastic musician who from his base in Skåne, southern Sweden, sees a world without borders.
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Cattle 2.0
If you have an account on facebook or twitter, if you use gmail or hotmail, if your identity depends on someone else’s brand name, then that brand has branded your ass: thereby, you belong to that company.
If you think this means you don’t exist online without your own domain name, then in my opinion you are right!
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How to become a celebrity
Celebrate yourself!
That sounds simple enough doesn’t it? Sure does — but then why don’t more people do that? My hunch is that they simply haven’t learned how to do it.
Let me give an example:
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
The author of that “blog article” (this piece comes under the heading “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings”) has her own website, and the same article appears on her so-called blog entry named “Regrets of the Dying” — but the website is regretably (no pun intended ) a sight for sore eyes… — and it is not really a weblog (a weblog is a collection of “log” entries on the web, and each entry must be dated — but Bronnie Ware’s articles are not dated). Above I linked to a copy of the article to give an indication of how old the article is — I believe it might be much older, but right now I was not able to easily find an older copy of the article).
Expressing your feelings is definitely important, but it also helps to know how to do it. Bonnie’s article drives home how important it is to actually live out your life to the fullest before you die — there is no one else who can or will or wants to do that for you. Perhaps you could look at it this way: your life is nothing other than the sum total of your own expressions.
So how do you express yourself effectively? Actually, many ways are possible — the most important part of answering that question is: you should focus on yourself. If you put on someone else’s clothes, then the clothes are not expressing yourself — they are expressing someone else’s creation. If you visit someone else’s website and click a button or icon, you are nothing more than a cog in a machine — the product of which is someone else’s content. Perhaps most importantly, you need to differentiate between expressing your own thoughts and feelings versus being for or against someone else’s statement.
Once you truly live out your own life this way, once you not only accept your own life but in fact positively celebrate it, then you open the door for others to likewise celebrate your positive attitude and living expression of yourself. But do not make the mistake of paying attention to whether others do this or not — because as soon as you start doing that, you will divert attention from your own path. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t celebrate the lives of others — you should definitely reward those who inspire you with your attention and celebration of the way their living their own lives inspires you.
The easiest way to become a celebrity is to express yourself, to celebrate yourself and to celebrate whoever or whatever inspires you. Celebration is what celebrity is all about!
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The Mainstream Media Industrial Complex
Mainstream media has traditionally been closely linked to “paid media” (advertising), because of the long-standing tradition of bifurcation in these traditional media channels — namely that “free content” is “ad-supported”.
For many decades, the apparent duality of content was maintained in many societies — primarily those in which the publishing industry played a significant role in launching propaganda campaigns supported by industrial interests, thereby forming a “coalition of the willing” to propagate this myth.
More or less coincidentally — but by no means insignificantly — the economic structures of employment, labor contracts, etc., which are deeply intertwined with the capitalistic germs of 19th Century industrialization, a fanatical idealization of a purportedly “free press” followed in the 20th Century led to the confluence of mainstream media and industrial interests, such that being on par with mainstream interests became closely tied to employment opportunity and/or supporting capitalism in general. Essentially, mainstream media supported capitalism and capitalism supported mainstream media — and in countries where this fusion of interests was most advanced, not supporting capitalism (and the regulations and laws associated with this form of economic structure) became more and more a sign of being awkward and/or an iconoclast.
Yesterday, a friend of mine declared that a particular article which appeared in a particular mainstream media channel was “not fluff” (I am not identifying the person, because not only was the discussion private in nature, but also because in my opinion it simply doesn’t matter here). I disagreed, basically indicating a quick and fleeting impression of the above brief historical sketch and/or outline of “mainstream media” (which is perhaps best elucidated by Noam Chomsky’s extensive work — e.g. Manufacturing Consent).
Once (for example: in Colonial and Revolutionary America), a “free press” was a very fundamental and basic “natural” right. Today, it is often more of a fiction — and in its place stands a “mainstream media industrial complex”, essentially based on an ideology of capitalism. Today, to criticize any of the catastrophic results of unfettered capitalism is to launch an attack on mainstream media — a media built on a deranged mythological notion of freedom fused with employment.
For most of the last century mainstream media grew in leaps and bounds to become a gigantic ship — a titanic information vessel sitting on top of an empty horizon. With the advent of the Internet, this huge ship has become increasingly surrounded by alternative media icebergs, which in sharp contrast to mainstream media are hardly visible to the general population.
So far, the indoctrination of the masses with the mainstream “freedom and employment” myth has been rock steady, but increasingly an increasing malaise is spreading across the world: a disenchantment with the spectre of fanatically “free market” capitalist media pollution.
Although these trends are obvious, they are not depicted in mainstream media. Mainstream media are still banking on followers who believe in and support the “freedom and employment” capitalist mythology. As small business markets become ever more efficient, the traditional economies of “scale” are retreating into ever fewer market segments. Presently, capitalism still has a stranglehold on the financial markets, but the increasing murmurs and outcries are leading to a rising din of dissatisfaction that may even envelope this last refuge for “mainstream interest“.
Increasingly — to use Chomsky’s metaphor — the manufactured popularity is giving way to a more populist kind of mainstream media: increasingly, TV stations and newspapers are out; and increasingly, wikis and blogs are in. Increasingly, media requires ever less capital investment; increasingly, mainstream is becoming less devoted to wild and unfettered capitalism. Increasingly, the notion that financial returns on investment and monetary earnings reports are the only indicators of profit are being called into question by increasing numbers of people.
I have a hunch that the notion of mainstream is undergoing radical change — the traditional devotion to capitalism is giving way to an “alternative mainstream”… but so far, that alternative is an unknown. So far, it doesn’t have a face; so far, it doesn’t have a name; so far it has no ethics, no demands, no party program,…. So far it seems like it has nothing.
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Tagged alternative, capitalism, employment, free press, freedom, mainstream, publishing
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