Of Mice and Personal Fulfilment
Clay Shirkey’s talk, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus from the 2008 Web 2.0 conference is being linked to from basically everywhere right now — so I’d be remiss in not sharing it too.
This is something that people in the media world don’t understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race—consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you’ll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it ‘s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.
I think he overstates his case: in drawing an equivalence between consuming television and the excesses of gin consumption at the start of the industrial age, he’s glossing over the ways that media consumption itself has always had creative and meaningful outcomes — but it’s a provocative piece all the same.
Your Comments
John writes:
Yeah, I see what you mean. It is a bit triumphantalist: but that’s standard for this genre. And I love the term “cognitive surplus”.
Posted: 28 04 2008 - 18:12 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
I note too that there’s a thorough going-over of the talk in the Boing Boing comments — some of which are even useful and engaged.
Posted: 28 04 2008 - 18:36 | Permanent link to this comment
Catherine writes:
Maybe I’m just not getting something crucial, but I found this a really confused piece of argument, especially in terms of its thinking around social/historical change.
Sample text: “…it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today.”
Who is agent, and who is acted upon? Society doesn’t passively “get” institutional structures or patterns of behaviour and consumption – “it” creates (and recreates) them. Or (to be really pedantic…), the individuals and groups that constitute that society create them.
“Society” didn’t (ever) “wake up” from the “sleep” of modernity, aka the social impacts of the industrial revolution. The temperance movement that helped to halt gin consumption was a very specific social and religious movement… I could go on.
I guess my point is that it bothers me when real, historical consumption patterns and social trends are obscured by rhetoric that turns individuals and groups into passive recipients of change.
Posted: 30 04 2008 - 21:07 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
Hi Catherine,
I share your disquiet about Shirkey’s talk; it’s a radically un-nuanced and hyperbolic reading of various cultural histories and movements. Maybe it’s less problematic in its original context though — directed, as it is, at the membership of the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Conference, who collectively must have the historical awareness and attention span of a mayfly!
In that situation, any attempt to make an audience think about historical patterns and social context would need to cut through with a heavy dose of dodgy metaphor and OTT prognostication.
And it seems to be working; in addition to the Boing Boing thread I posted before, this Making Light conversation thread has featured some really sophisticated debate about the ideas Shirkey has raised.
Posted: 1 05 2008 - 17:53 | Permanent link to this comment
Catherine writes:
“In that situation, any attempt to make an audience think about historical patterns and social context would need to cut through with a heavy dose of dodgy metaphor and OTT prognostication.”
Good point, Nick… yeah, that Making Light thread is a good ‘un.
I leave the tshirt design (“OTT Prognosticator”) up to you :-)
Posted: 9 05 2008 - 23:43 | Permanent link to this comment
Nick Caldwell writes:
My mind is bubbling with ideas already.
Hah, I wonder if T-shirt sites prove his point or not, and if so, do they prove it to be a good or a bad thing? :-)
Posted: 12 05 2008 - 18:00 | Permanent link to this comment