Facebook, Apple and The Future
Here’s one of the things you notice as you use Facebook more and more. You actually, probably, have more funny and smart friends than you’d previously thought. People here and there using the “Status” update to say something funny or pithy or just inappropriate. Something that makes you think or gives you pause and or makes you laugh.
I was staring at Facebook the other day and thinking about the future and about how and what it meant for media in general. Same old conversation that I always have with myself. That being, with a geometric increase in the amount of content available on the web, what were the implications for media companies, for content itself, for old-school monopolistic distribution systems.
We are entering a new age.
See the thing about tools like Garageband, and iPhoto, and video editing that any junior high schooler can do. The thing is that, the problem is that, so much of it is honestly good.
It’s not just about filters. It’s not just about a sea of dreck and banality. There is so much good music out there. There are so many really funny people out there writing things and making jokes. There are so many personalities.
These tools really have empowered people in a way that has never been possible before. They have emboldened and empowered people. Our culture is, of course, a bit slow to come to terms with these facts. We still think in terms of stars and celebrities and notoriety.
But those concepts, I think, are easing somewhat. In favor of something more akin to captains of community. Not celebrities, per se. But, you know, that old word, “influencers”. What celebrities would be if their scope was measurably smaller. Little bands of people, following or unfollowing people here and there. Their favorite blog writers. Their favorite musicians.
Content has flooded the system. And, again, the problem isn’t that so much of it is bad. On the contrary, so much of it is genuinely good. Funny. Smart. Well written. Well produced.
It’s hard to say what it means definitively. But certainly, the idea that “content is king” seems a little out of touch. Maybe really hard to produce content is king, like TV shows. Maybe. But general content. People getting paid for being funny and sarcastic and wry and good writers. I just feel like there can’t be much of a premium on that these days. I have to think that those folks, the intelligentsia, the people that floated throughout the media and the publishing world, going to cool parties, and posing in fun pictures, those people, if they ever had any money at all, will have less in the future.
I’m not saying this because I have schadenfreude and I’m jealous and wish all those people ill. Although of course I’m human. So I want to get invited to all the cool parties too.
I’m just saying it because it seems like the natural course of things.
It’s hard to tell if it’s bad. Certainly, it’s disruptive. Certainly, it’s not going to be enough to write a funny blog in the future. At least, I don’t think it will.
I suspect, and again, perhaps because I’ve justifying my own existence, that we will evolve into a much broader community of hobbyists and creators. That our notions of exceptionalism around specific kinds of art will diminish. That hard-to-make art, that is, either expensive or really time-consuming will preserve some of its pricing power. More art will become easier to make, music included. And music will become closer (not exactly the same of course, but closer) to things like scrapbooking, gardening, cooking, etc. Things that many people enjoy doing and many people enjoy doing well.
I can’t really tell if it’s a bad thing or a good thing. Any one person’s art won’t be that special but that does not mean it won’t be good. And more people than ever before will feel empowered to create things. And perhaps new modes of art will evolve that will be hard to create and there will be scarcity.
I have to feel like more people creating beautiful things and expressing themselves has to be a good thing even if we lose that element of common culture that clues in everyone on the planet to that good thing and maybe there are only a couple hundred people that ever find out what this one person is doing or creating. That’s still good right?
