« don't sleep on dead city. | Main | yatta drinkups at vloggercon »
June 5, 2006
Deer With Guns.
I scrapped my talk for PBS' Culture, Commerce, and Public Media Symposium at the last minute and presented a short rant which I entitled, Deer With Guns.
It'll take me a day to populate it with hyperlinks. In the meantime, here's the text:
Let me tell you a quick story.
I've always had an interest in eastern religion.
In particular, I'm fascinated with the buddhist idea that
the more you chase the universe, the faster it runs away from you.
As we develop new technology and instrumentation for discovering the world, we find new detail and levels of scale that makes us rethink our truths.
It's an idea that I carry over into my work in participatory media (or 'User Generated Content')
in that although we've created a fantastic system of mass media,
- it works well for the State,
- it works well for our institutions including corporations,
nonprofits, workers unions, and wealthy families
it's not until recently that
we've developed
the technology and
instrumentation
for the explicit
spread of ideas
to scale down
to the benefit
of
the
individual.
So if we look at this phenomena of 'User Generated Content' first we see our Users
which is little more than
a nicer name for the group
formerly known as consumers.
We call them Users
to acknowledge the fact that we've discovered that they aren't passive,
and that they're armed with tools to create, recreate,
and distribute ideas
on their own.
In other words, they've gone from being "sheep" to "deer with guns" which i find funny b/c the only thing I've known both sheep and deer to do is eat and poop.
So what kind of content are these users generating?
> Iterative content - (blog commentary on existing memes, remix, recontextualization, and mashup --
all building and extending existing work. Replication and riff.)
> Original content - relatively few for whatever reason.
maybe we're not used to the tools
(as some of my colleagues think)
I think it's something a lot more wonderful
and a lot less artificial:
People don't always want to make original content.
people like to discover and share ideas.
they like to:
- Aggregate it
- Curate it.
- Riff off of it.
PEOPLE WANT TO BUILD OFF OF EXISTING WORK.
It's nonmarket, the compensation is nonlinear and no threat to you if you open your minds to it.
None of this is new. I made my first mixtape for a girl when i was 7.
None of this is new. We've been standing around 'networking socially' around coffee urns since at least this morning.
What's new is that we now have the TECHNOLOGY and INSTRUMENTATION for rendering these implicit activities among users REACHABLE, TRACEABLE, and fully EXPLICIT.
With all respect to you 'auteurs' out there, if all you're doing is creating content to have someone come up to you on the street and pat your back and tell you how great you are, you are delusional and egocentric.
THIS IS NOT A FLAT EARTH.
As public media with a responsibility towards your communities, YOUR WORK DOES NOT STOP AT THE TELEVISION SET.
You now have the technology to connect with the particular communities that WANT to connect with your ideas and turn them into discussion, organization, and collective action.
it's happening with participatory media.
it can happen with commercial media.
it can happen with public media.
but EITHER WAY, IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN WITH OR WITHOUT YOU.
thank you.
Posted by yatta at June 5, 2006 4:45 PM