Author: David Newhoff

David is an author, communications professional, and copyright advocate. After more than 20 years providing creative services and consulting in corporate communications, he shifted his attention to law and policy, beginning with advocacy of copyright and the value of creative professionals to America’s economy, core principles, and culture.

Techno Utopians II – Culture

If we define culture in the context of pro-piracy utopianism as described in Part I, then we’re really talking about movies, TV shows, music, and fiction literature. So, the first distinction I would make between these media and that which we’ve defined as information is that these are technically luxury goods, to which there is no natural right.  In the U.S., we generally agree that there is a natural right to information, and there is plenty of precedent for this assertion, but there is no inherent right to a particular volume of entertainment media in any of its forms.

The techno-utopian seems to want to conflate information and entertainment when it is convenient to make idealistic statements like the one quoted in Part I — “Imagine all the world’s information and culture…” and so on.  And while I agree that information and culture are interdependent and intertwined, this does not mean, for instance, that one’s right to know what Congress does without a cost barrier also implies a right to download Coldplay to one’s iPod without a cost barrier.  It’s patently absurd to compare these two actions, which is why I’ve separated what we’re calling culture from what we’re calling information.

As with information consumption, the consumer is still bound by linear time.  So, one truly avid consumer, whether buying or stealing, cannot consume all the culture there is and still function in normal life.  This is one of the fallacies of the digital age in general — that more is inherently better or even pragmatically accessible.  We have about 20 times the number of TV channels we had in the 1980s, but that doesn’t automatically give all viewers more time to watch TV.  And this limitation doesn’t reduce exponentially when technology affords us anytime/anywhere access.  I use Netflix streaming to catch up on stuff I haven’t seen or to re-watch favorites, and although the technology affords me the chance to increase my consumption, that time still finite.

With regard to time, the techno-utopian also tends to lump all cultural media into one big pile and fails to consider the time/cost investment relative to each medium.  Clearly, one can consume music faster than TV shows, TV shows faster than movies, and movies faster than books.  So, if we’re taking a utopian view and envisioning a well-rounded consumer digesting a diversity of media, then the time limitation becomes even more pronounced, which means the cost barriers are actually lower for the most culturally engaged consumers.  And to be honest, is that who we’re really talking about?

Still, the techno-utopian wants to assert that there are artificial barriers to access created and/or enforced exclusively by large corporate entities (Big Media) to the sole purpose of profiting from mediocre works while stifling innovation in the creative arts.  An oft-repeated sentiment is summed up by this quote from one critic on this blog:  “Record labels and movie studios are businesses out to make a profit. They don’t care about art, they care about sales.”

Setting aside the fact that all businesses large and small have to care about sales, or they’re not in business, this statement is really a component of the “junk food” argument used against Hollywood and the record labels. Folks like this commenter point to media like $100 million tentpole movies and corporate rock as overpriced, high-profit, low-value culture that somehow stands in the way of better work.  One problem with this position from a cultural standpoint is that, like quality information, the market doesn’t necessarily want “better” movies and music. One of the strongest examples of film directing I’ve seen in years is Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011). Most viewers wouldn’t know why she’s done such a solid job, but the truth is very few people will even see the film because it deals with a serious, painful subject; and the general sentiment among viewers remains, “I want to go to the movies to have a good time.”

“But,” says the techno-utopian, “the more access Ramsay has to the global audience, the more likely she is to find an audience for her less-mainstream movies.”  Perhaps, but if that audience is exclusively watching her work for free, she won’t be making her next film.  More to the point, though, it seems that pirated work pretty well reflects the tastes of the paying audience.  According to TorrentFreak, the Top Ten most pirated movies of 2011 include eight films that can be called “tentpole,” with Fast Five and The Hangover II coming in First and Second respectively.

Speaking as a lifetime snob and student of all cinema, I’m hard-pressed to see how free access to these particular titles is a prelude to a new cultural enlightenment.  Were there overwhelming data indicating that the digital generation’s tastes are radically more sophisticated than mainstream content, then some of these utopian attitudes might have merit; but this does not appear to be the trend.  Not surprisingly, it seems millions of people still want Twinkies instead of tofu, but the techno-utopians want to justify stealing the Twinkies on the grounds that it’s just junk food.  This isn’t fertile ground for cultural growth so much as adolescent shoplifting.

Techno-Utopians Part I: Information

The defenders of online piracy (the polite ones anyway) often paint a vision of a future that, on paper, sounds very attractive indeed.  This, from one commenter on my blog, is a good representation of a sensibility we encounter all the time:

“Imagine a world where you have access to all the world’s books, movies, music, the entirety of the world’s published knowledge and culture at your fingertips instantly, with no limitations. This is an incredible level of enrichment. You have everything and the freedom to learn, watch, or entertain you with anything you can dream of. The entire world is accessible to you, in a way never before possible in the history of humanity. Along with millions of other people, just like yourself.”

My piece In Defense of a Little Elitism that drew the ire of my dear friends at Techdirt was a toe in the water on this subject, but quotes like the one above inspire a more practical examination of what I call a techno-utopian vision of the future.

Take the premise that the people should have access to all the world’s knowledge and culture, and answer three questions honestly:  1) Do the people want all the world’s knowledge and culture? 2) How much can one person consume in a practical and enriching manner? 3) Is cost (what some call artificial scarcity) really a barrier?  As a general statement, anti-copyright, techno-utopians chant the refrain “culture existed before copyright,” to which my equally general response is, “and information existed before the Internet.”  But let’s look deeper at both, beginning with information.

We’ll define information as things like news, non-fiction works, documentaries, research data, opinion pieces, first-hand accounts of events, etc. and culture as entertainment media — filmed entertainment, fiction writing, music, etc.  Information, in most forms, is already available for free at a volume that no one person could absorb in a lifetime.  Every news organization has a website; just about every major journalist has a blog or other online archive of his work; research and policy organizations make their articles and papers available for free; many documentary films can be viewed for free or very cheaply; and then there are thousands of independent sources ranging from excellent to WTF.  The truly interested consumer has ample opportunity to compare and contrast a wealth of competing data on just about any subject he chooses, but is this what most people are really doing with information?

Free access to knowledge has unquestionably increased since the early 1990s, but this hasn’t necessarily slowed our tendency to apply practiced stupidity here in wealthy, developed America; so I have my doubts about the global enlightenment envisioned by my friend quoted above. While one can get access to quality sources, one can also find supporting “evidence” for any preposterous or even dangerous belief we can name.  According to this recent article on AlterNet (a site I find hit or miss), Americans who dispute evolution is up 2% since 1989 to a full 46% of the total population.  What this article does well is describe some of the potential hazards of fostering anti-science attitudes that go well beyond feelings about religion and Darwin.

How stifling to innovation is it to assert creationism over paleontology and evolutionary biology?  How much farther along might we be in renewable energy technology were it not so easy to convince millions that climate change is bad science or a liberal conspiracy?  These are just two examples of raw, unenlightened thinking in one highly developed nation; and I want to ask my techno-utopian friends, how has the Internet helped?  I’ll guess one answer myself:  the Internet has been a boon to science and technology by changing the way people share and learn from one another’s research, experiments, and data.  This is absolutely true — among the scientists, doctors, and technologists.  Conversely, many of the people (a full 46% of us it seems) are moving in exactly the opposite direction.

My point is not to reject the clear and specific benefits of the Web, only to temper notions of all the world’s information being available to all the people.  At best, I’d argue that the Web itself is just a dumb pipeline that simultaneously can carry the insights of a Stephen Hawking or the effluent of a Fred Phelps. There’s really no controlling from which well the proverbial horse will choose to drink.

But let’s set aside cynicism and the data that implies people don’t necessarily want information and look at people who do want it.  Are there real barriers for these people?  Is there artificial scarcity for the average citizen who wants to learn more?  I can buy a used copy of Dr. Hawking’s A Brief History of Time from B&N online for less than two bucks or check a copy out of my library for free.  “But,” says the techno-utopian, “you could and should have it all at your fingertips!”  Why?  Exactly how fast can the average citizen read and comprehend A Brief History of Time before he’s ready to move on to something by Dr. Greene or Dr. Tyson?  Why is it valuable to have “it all at your fingertips” 24-7 and for free?  Are there really that many budding astrophysicists who simply cannot feed their insatiable curiosity due to some corporate controlled scarcity?  And call me snobbish, but I’m going to bet that (in the developed world anyway) a guy who has both the time and the interest to learn about astrophysics as a hobby is also very likely to have the money to pay for his media.

Just as a mundane example, if I were to read 50% of the articles posted by my friends on Facebook, I wouldn’t get my own work done; if I were to read 100%, I’d have to give up basic tasks like bathing, eating, and tying my kids’ shoes.  The point is that scarcity, with regard to any media consumption is inherent in our mortal bonds to linear time.  We simply cannot consume it all, and according to some sound advice from Clay Johnson in The Information Diet, we really shouldn’t try.  The idea that online piracy is heralding some new enlightenment is, I believe, a very pretty mask hiding a very ugly face.

In Part II, We’ll look at Techno-Utopianism and Culture.

In Defense of (a little) Elitism

Imagine your diet will henceforth be determined by the tastes of a majority of American ten-year-olds.  This may sound as unlikely as it does unappetizing, but the prospect is not really all that different from the basis for at least one of the arguments of the copyleft crowd with regard to distributing creative content via the Web.  One assumption behind DIY culture seems to be that the best work is being systematically squashed by big media conglomerates, and that the level playing field of the Web will allow great art to emerge through the ultimate, democratic means — popularity supported by algorithms.  This theory has proven generally untrue for journalism, music, and publishing; and we’re now on the leading edge of its proving untrue for filmed entertainment.

Gavin Casleton, in this article shared on The Trichordist, sums up his observations about popularity combined with search algorithms thus:  “When you release the valve without well-tuned filters in place, you get what we have now:  muddy waters (not the artist, the metaphor).  You have tracks from seasoned artists like Radiohead distributed side by side with garbage (not the band, the metaphor), and you have transferred the burden and blessing of filtering from more official gatekeepers to the consumer….[but] when almost all new aggregators are adopting the algorithm that sorts results by Most Popular, you tend to end up with the same results.”

The apparent good in this digital-age model — that it is populist — is also its own weakness when we look at results in various media.  Most obviously, it doesn’t take more than a glance at the effects of extreme populism on journalism to realize that we now have news tailored to every taste — conservative, liberal, alternative, user-generated, subversive, and just plain wacko. No one can argue that the consumer isn’t “getting what he wants, and for free,” but the democratization of journalism has broadened the concept to include literally anyone with a computer.  As with Caselton’s Radiohead example, the best journalists in the world now swim in murky waters amid every crackpot, amateur netizen who considers himself a reporter.

Likewise, overemphasis on populism does not inherently produce the best art, either for the creators, the industry in question, or for society as a whole.  Anyone who has taken an art-history or literature class knows that many works immediately unpopular in their time are now among the canon of world masterpieces. The digital-age conceit (because the Web is an egomaniac’s paradise) is that the consumer always knows best; but this apparently fair and reasonable-sounding attitude may well be a greater culture killer than all the suits in Hollywood have ever been.  Why?  Because, just like solid news reporting, great art is not created by popular consent; to the contrary, it is often created in spite of it. When we shift the “burden and blessing” of gatekeeping from a finite number of professionals involved in the process to an infinite number of amateurs detached from the process, we are simultaneously creating work by committee in real-time while undermining the principle of investment in that work in the first place.

It is necessary that both artist and investor take risks. Sometimes art will succeed and money will fail, sometimes the other way around; and occasionally both will succeed or fail together.  Specifically, of course, I am thinking about my own industry and the fact that filmmaking, on a scale greater than other media, requires substantial investment and collaboration among professionals to produce damn good, let alone exceptional, work.

When the film director proposes some creative choice, he may meet resistance from any number of gatekeepers — from his most trusted Director of Photography to some guy in the studio marketing department who has never taken a decent vacation photo, let alone made a movie.  Ironically, though, the web-based, populist model would take what might be wrong with the marketing guy — that he thinks he knows the audience — and exacerbate the problem exponentially by insinuating audience taste even more invasively into the creative process.   Frankly, I’d rather deal with the marketing guy than an algorithm.

The consumer/audience is, of course, the ultimate arbiter of work once it has been produced, but history demonstrates that too much attention to the whims of viewers within the process is less likely to produce the next Citizen Kane so much as the next Fear Factor.