I wrote a little summary of talk I gave a while back for Mediabistro conference on ebooks. The talk was more about how professional publishing has to accept that 80% of them are now unnecessary, and that only the most passionate and qualified need remain.
This version ended up a little more about the perils of believing that everything journalistic can be handled effectively by well-meaning amateurs.
First they came for the musicians, and I did not speak out—because I am not a musician. Then they came for the filmmakers, and I did not speak out—because I am not a filmmaker. Then they came for the journalists, and there was no one left to speak out for us.
In a media universe that for so many decades, even centuries, seemed stacked against the amateur, the Internet has made a revolutionary impact. Previously, the only law of physics that seemed to apply to the top-down, corporate-driven media space was that of gravity. King George II, William Randolph Hearst, or even Rupert Murdoch would decide what the public should believe and then print that version of reality. And inventions from the printing press to radio, which once seemed to be returning media to the people’s hands, were quickly monopolized by the powers that be. Renaissance kings burned unauthorized printing shops, and the Federal Communications Commission tilted the radio spectrum to corporate control. Our mainstream media seemed permanently biased toward those in power as well as toward whatever version of history they wished to record for posterity.
But at least at first glance the Internet seems to be different. It is a biased medium, to be sure, but biased to the amateur and to the immediate—as if to change some essential balance of power. Indeed, the Web so overwhelmingly tilts toward the immediate as to render notions of historicity and permanence obsolete. Even Google is rapidly converting to live search—a little list of not the most significant, but the most recent results for any query term. Likewise, our blog posts and tweets are increasingly biased not just toward brevity but immediacy—a constant flow, as if it is just humanity expressing itself.
And this notion of writing and thoughts just pouring out of us is also the premise for the new amateur journalism. It is nonprofessional in both intent and content—as close to what its writers believe is an unfiltered, pure gestalt of observation and self-expression. As if the time taken to actually reflect or consider is itself a drawback—or at the very least a disadvantage to whoever wants to be credited with starting a Twitter thread (as if anyone keeps track). Of course writing—whether considered or not—is most definitely never a direct feed from the heart or soul but rather the use of an abstract symbol system, highly processed by the brain and no more gestalt than solving a math equation.
The real difference between the Net and traditional writing is the barrier to entry. Before computers, journalists had to use typewriters—with no cut/copy/paste functionality. Typewritten articles and manuscripts couldn’t be corrected—they had to be rewritten from scratch. Almost no one enjoyed this process, which actively discouraged all but the truly dedicated from attempting to write professionally. Now not only is writing much easier, but distribution is automatic. Writing something in an online environment means being distributed from the moment one hits “publish.” It’s not a matter of how many people actually read the piece; it’s a matter of how many could.
Which gets to the heart of the misconception leading to the demise of professional journalism: People believe their blog posts and tweets may as well be interchangeable with those of the professional journalists with whom they are now competing for attention. Dozens of times now I have fielded these same questions after my lectures—What makes some newspaper columnist’s writing any more important than their blog? With cameras and keyboards in phones these days, why do we even need reporters? Won’t someone see and report?
What Makes a Journalist?
What these honest questions don’t take into account is that a professional journalist isn’t just someone who has access to the newswires, or at least it shouldn’t be. A professional newsperson is someone who is not only trained to pursue a story and deconstruct propaganda, but someone who has been paid to spend the time and energy required to do so effectively. Corporations and governments alike spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on their public relations and communications strategies. They hire professionals to tell or, more often, obfuscate their stories. Without a crew of equally qualified—if not equally funded—professionals to analyze and challenge these agencies’ fictions, we are defenseless against them.
And thus, we end up in the same place we were before—only worse, because now we believe we own and control the media that has actually owned and controlled us all along.
First off, our misguided media revolutionaries are mistaking access to the tools for competency with the skills. Just because a kid now enjoys the typing skill and distribution network once exclusive to a professional journalist doesn’t mean he knows how to research, report or write. It’s as if a teenager who has played Guitar Hero got his hands on a real Stratocaster—and thinks he’s ready for an arena show.
Worse than the enthusiastic amateurization of writing and journalism is that the very same kinds of companies are making the same money off this writing—simply by different means. Value is still being extracted from everyone who writes for free—whether it’s me writing this piece or a blogger writing his. It’s simply not being passed down anymore. Google still profits off the ads accompanying every search for this article. Likewise, every “free” video by an amateur requires that amateur to buy a camera, a video-capable laptop, editing software, and a broadband connection through which to upload the completed piece onto Google-owned YouTube, along with certain rights.
Value is still being extracted from the work—it’s just being taken from a different place in the production cycle and not passed down to the writers or journalists themselves. Those of us who do write for a living are told the free labor will garner us exposure necessary to get paid for something else we do—like talks or television. Of course the people hiring us to do those appearances believe they should get us for free as well since they’re publicizing our writing.
Worst of all, those of us still in a position to say something about any of this are labeled elitists or Luddites—as if we are the ones attempting to repress the natural evolution of culture. Rather, it’s the same old spectacle working its magic through a now-decentralized media space. The results—ignorance, anger, and anti-elitism—are the same.
The pen may be a mightier tool than the sword, but not when we’re using it to lobotomize ourselves.
Nowhere have I seen a clearer example of the perils of corporatism playing out than in the current handling of the BP oil spill. If only Obama understood the context of the decisions he’s about to make, he might be able to use this as an opportunity to turn all this around, and put people and the planet before profits. (Will someone please tell him to read my book Life Inc?)
Like so many presidents before him, Obama is being given an opportunity to choose between corporatism and commerce, between banking and the environment, between investment capital and small business, between passive extraction of value and active creation of value. And, like almost all of them, he’s going the wrong way.
Today, Obama will be discussing the leak – already the greatest environmental disaster in US history even if it were patched right now – with his counterpart in Great Britain, newly elected Prime Minister David Cameron. Why are the two talking? Because if the US actually were to force UK-based BP to pay for damage it’s causing, the company would lose a lot of money – and so would its shareholders.
In the latest round of empty fist waving by Obama and apologetic posturing by BP, the President raised the issue that while BP has spent a few tens of millions on the cleanup effort and damages so far, the company’s annual dividend to shareholders is about $10.5 billion. The company is acting as if all its resources are being diverted to address this spill, when – financially anyway – this is clearly not the case. So as a way of changing the widespread perception that it is underspending on the crisis, BP suggested it might “suspend” – meaning pay later, not never – its quarterly dividend. A gesture of goodwill.
What a brilliant move. By suggesting they might suspend their dividend, BP initiated widespread panic about what would happen if that dividend were compromised in any real way. All of a sudden, business newspapers and cable channels begin calculating just what this means for shareholders – those people and institutions who park their money in an oil company and expect returns. How many pension funds have invested in BP? And how many retirees in England have made the oil a company a central part of their retirement portfolios, and are depending on these dividends to maintain their quality of life?
So now, instead of an transnational oil company against the American gulf fishermen, beach workers, and ocean itself, it’s the interests of presumably innocent British pensioners against American workers. We’re supposed to limit BP’s liability for wrecking our lives and our planet, because of the impact that appropriate penalties will have on those collecting dividends off the oil company’s crimes against us. This means bailing out the company by using government funds to pay for its spill.
Sorry, but the too-big-to-fail argument just doesn’t play. Investors: This is what you get when you decide to bet your retirement on an oil company in the 21st century. Why did you think the dividend was ten times what you’d get from a government bond? Because of the risk. This is the post-Valdez universe, after all. While many of the readers of this blog might be too young to remember that oil disaster, septuagenarian pensioners should be able to remember.
The pity-the-pensioners argument is really just another way of valuing passive extraction of wealth by those with capital over the active creation of wealth by those who work. There are plenty of old people in the gulf who, instead of depending on shares of stock are still working on boats or supporting their kids who are. But under a corporatist scheme, the people who actually create value are much less valued than those who passively extract it from them.
In a healthier, more justly designed economy, pensioners would be investing the excess wealth of their working years into local businesses, their kids’ businesses, or other productive assets instead of the retail stock of long-distance, environmentally irresponsible multinationals. The fact that the latter strategy is failing one is no justification for working people to bail out the investment capital community time and time again.
Then, of course, there’s all those union workers at BP – supposedly in danger of losing employment if we were actually to allow the company to falter. But by favoring the interests of a company operating on the scale of BP over the interests of small businesspeople trying to fish, beach, cook, or even make energy, we simply increase our dependence on corporations for employment. And continuing to favor the corporate scale over the human one just makes it that much harder to choose appropriately the next time. Bailing out Goldman Sachs makes it harder not to bail out BP, and so on.
Don’t get me wrong: this is not a right-left problem. The Left’s commitment to unions is just as debilitating as our Right’s commitment to corporate welfare. For while unions are great for workers already mired in the corporatist scheme, they work against the interests of those attempting to work independently of that system. Union workers need the corporations they work for to succeed, so they end up in a death grip with management – everyone simply fighting over the ill-gotten spoils. Union workers work hard and deserve compensation – but in the big picture, they are more like the crew on a pirate ship fighting for their share of the raping and pillaging.
It’s possible Obama just doesn’t get this (which is why I want him to read my book – or at least have one of his people write a summary for him). He may have benefited so much from the system as it exists that he truly believes that the marriage of government and corporate interests is the best way to work society. He may have seen the short-term successes of corporate welfare, and believe that the maintenance of these outsized institutions really is the only way to provide individuals with the jobs and income they need to survive.
But it’s a losing game and an economic system that is at once bad for people, bad for the planet, and bad for business. BP, and corporations of their ilk, are not truly profitable – not without government intervention, and not without excluding the human and planetary costs of their activities. If BP were actually to pay back the cost of repairing the damage to the environmental and business infrastructure of the Gulf Coast, they would cease to exist.
And if Obama has read a bit of history and economics and does get this? What does that mean? It means that his policy of defending other oil companies and oil-producing nations in our prolonged war in Afghanistan have cost him the political capital he needs to fight on our behalf against BP. England is our only vocal partner left in what has become America’s longest war, ever. We can’t afford to lose them as our friend and ally.
Of course, England isn’t really fighting in Afghanistan because they want to support their great friend, America. They’ve got the very same oil interests that we do. They’ve also the same obedience to the corporations putting politicians in office, giving union workers their jobs, and paying pensioners their dividends.
The BP crisis recapitulates the entirety of corporatism in real time, transparently enough for anyone to see. It should be evidence enough for us to break from business as usual, right now. This is not just a disaster, but a golden opportunity as big as 9-11 to leverage new public awareness towards a positive, groundbreaking shift away from corporatism and back toward the creation of real value – away from corporations, and toward people.
This is Obama’s chance to promote change we can believe in, the change we have been waiting for. If he doesn’t, then we really ought to turn our backs on hope.
The failure and abandonment of shopping malls throughout the country has a bright side: smart communities and businesses are turning them into greenhouses for organic agriculture. Talk about a nice urban hack. (Hack, as in its original sense of retooling something for a better purpose.)
If this is the way the post-apocalypse looks, count me in.
The Galleria Mall in Cleveland, Ohio is leading the way by growing organic food for mall patrons and local restaurants. The mall has transformed the lost retail space within its glass-top confines into a gigantic, organic-food greenhouse. The idea sprouted when the mall’s marketing and events coordinator Vicky Poole teamed up with Jack Hamilton, a business owner in the Galleria. Together they began operating Gardens Under Glass, a hydroponic garden in the Galleria at Erieview in downtown Cleveland. The project is funded by a $30,000 start-up grant from the Civic Innovation Lab.
Here’s the cover for the paperback of Life Inc. Don’t get too excited, it’s not slated for release until January, so we’ll all have to make do with hard covers until then.
The book is in its sixth printing, which means there’s a nice, constant stream of interest in the ideas. I am planning some extremely strange media for when this edition comes out, so stay tuned for that. As for the title, we went with the original and a new subtitle. So the winners of the title contest and free books are the people who said to leave the title as it is! (I’ll email you when there’s a book to send.)
Believe it or not, the book I’m writing right now - Program or Be Programmed – will most likely be on the shelves before the Life Inc paperback. It’s going extremely well, though it’s the first time my writing process is being characterized by the way I can eliminate unnecessary ideas rather than the way a million related, parallel thoughts come into my head at any moment.
So it’s going to be a short book, which is probably perfect for our attention-deficit net-distracted culture. I’ve just moved the whole thing over to the writing program I use for comics, an outliney word processor called Scrivener which promotes more modular thought processes.
Also, got a number of great people volunteering to get this site in better shape. There are about six years of missing articles, and the last year or so of missing talks. We will have that up before P or B P comes out.
Finally, I’ve started an Institute, looking at memetics and society. It seems to be a better path than teaching at universities – at least for now. There will be some opportunities for study and work next year, but I have to get my book done first.
Sorry I haven’t been posting very much. Many things going on in my life and professionally that are keeping me on the road and offline.
My backlogged thoughts in no particular order:
I am writing Program or Be Programmed as a book. I will be done soon. Weeks, not months. Recent events in the Facebook and Apple universes have convinced me more than ever that programming is our era’s equivalent of literacy. Whether corporations are controlling the direction of technology, or whether technology is an emergent entity doing this on its own, our only option is to participate in its unfolding by participating in its programming.
On the terror front, I do not understand why the Times Square Bomber required funding.
Obama recently told a college audience that they’re being distracted by their iPads, and that they need to become aware of who is programming the devices they use. He is right.
I have a busy travel schedule coming up and will do my best to get it posted on this site. I desperately need a redesign and can barter if you are interested.
I’ve been doing online panel discussions at http://pbsdigitalnation.org for the past couple of months. Some of the participants of last month’s roundtable came to NYC last night for a live discussion. It’s one of the best panels I’ve been a part of, thanks to the participants: Sherry Turkle, Amy Bruckman, and RU Sirius – and to the live Twitter commentary streaming by during the whole thing, #dig_nat
Plenty of ideas came through for my upcoming book version of Program or Be Programmed, too. (yes, news about that on the way)
Grammar says everything. The online signup process for Nimbuzz, one of the wifi telephone services, asks users:
“To make sure you are not a computer, please type in the characters you see in the text box below:”
In other words, you can find out if you are human or computer by taking their simple test. Imagine if such a test were available to the androids in BladeRunner.
At least we all now have a place to turn if we are afraid we might be computers.
I’m moderating a conversation between the smartest people I know thinking about open source, crowd-sourcing, the hive, and digital mob behavior over at http://pbsdigitalnation.org It has already evolved into a mind-expanding, passionate, no-holds-barred conversation.
You are all invited to participate along with:
Danah Boyd – Social Media Researcher, Microsoft Research; Fellow, Berkman Center of Internet and Society, co-author, Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out. danah.org
Amy Bruckman – Associate Professor, Electronic Learning Communities, Georgia Institute of Technology www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/index.shtml
Nicholas Carr – author, The Big Switch and the forthcoming The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains . roughtype.com
Kevin Kelly – Senior Maverick, Wired magzine. Author, Out of Control, and What Technology Wants – coming in October www.kk.org/thetechnium/
Mark Pesce – co-inventor of VRML, founder, FutureSt social web consultancy, author, Share This Book (upcoming) www.sharethiscourse.org/
Clay Shirky – NYU Interactive Telecommunications Programm, author Here Comes Everybody www.shirky.com/
Sherry Turkle – Director, MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, author, The Second Self, Simulations and Its Discontents, and Alone Together (forthcoming) web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/techself/
Here’s a “trailer” for the video version of a talk I did for MediaBistro about the future of book publishing in an electronic era. I will try to find the whole thing, or some way for rushkoff.com people to see the entirety, as it was a free talk and free might as well be free.
January 21 - Brooklyn, NY. Talk for ETSY, 7p February 1 - The Webb School, Bell Buckle Tennessee. February 2 - Frontline Digital Nation premieres, 9pm PBS March 12 - SWSX, Austin TX more...
