Astra Taylor delicately finds a way through the minefields of ‘free’ – as in ‘information wants to be free’ – and winds up in a paradoxical DMZ, where the end result may be a cult of drones whose ‘sharing’ and ‘art’ makes others into billionaires.
Here she triangulates, using the terms provided, but at the same time deconstructing them [all emphasis mine]:
And so we have our conversation about the enormous cultural restructuring that is going on, but we are having it in a senseless vocabulary where “content” takes the place of “art” and “information” substitutes for “culture,” “knowledge,” “literature,” “music,” “cinema” and “meaning.” All the mysteries of the creative process are flattened: the fickle nature of the muse, the idiosyncrasies of scholarship, and the tenacity required to compose a novel. All are reduced to nothing by analogies derived from the logic of computer code, data processing and high-tech business models.
But a deeper problem arises when the idiom of technology supplants traditional social criticism. The “freedom” promoted by the software community always turns out to be the libertarian version. It’s about freedom of information: the desire to see how something is made, to tinker, and to pass those insights and innovations along. Copyleft, as the advocates of this all-purpose transparency call it, is not “left” in any traditional sense; it has nothing to say about entrenched systems of economic privilege or limits on profitability. Likewise, the open-source movement does not provide the blueprint for a fairer social order. Techno-utopians, wonderstruck by the latest in programming geekery, project insights about software development onto the broader social sphere, and the rest of us mistake technology’s gee-whiz factor for theoretical sophistication.
Meanwhile, the most hyped solutions for survival in a free economy always turn out to be anathema to those who care about art. Make a video that goes viral and lands you a gig directing commercials, we’re advised. Check out a cool app that embeds advertising in your film or song or book. For artists who have spent years resisting corporate values, it is galling to constantly hear that advertising is to be the only viable source of sustenance in the emerging order of total freedom.
Maybe “free” will soon become just another way of saying “service economy.” People won’t pay for music, books or film any longer? The trick, we are told, is to find the “fee” in “free.” Perhaps people will part with their money for the privilege of getting things quickly and with less hassle, kind of like how we buy bottled water when there’s a tap down the hall. Or maybe artists can “add value” to their creations by making themselves into desirable products their audiences can “connect” with. There was a time when the work took the spotlight and the artist receded into the background—no longer: In a world of digital super-abundance, the makers themselves are auto-generating precious scarcity. After all, when you’re working for reputational currency, to use one of Anderson’s stock phrases, you are your most valuable commodity. Celebrity will become even more essential to creative survival, and the cultivation of friends, fans and followers will be a full-time job.
For now, however, the vast majority of artists struggle for sustainability, not profit—and in our rush to “free” we make them canaries in the coal mine of virtual capitalism. There are many self-reliant creators who, even though they appear successful enough, subsist humbly off the proceeds of their work. There are people who spend years toiling to produce something significant before persuading their audience to give them—for an album, a book or a film—perhaps $10 or $20 dollars in return. Why not have those who are so eager to sever this meager source of sustenance make the first foray into the land of free? Imagine the savings to society if computer programmers or venture capitalists were paid in beer.
Obviously we must balance our desire for free stuff with a concern for work. But the open-source software tradition, our final authority on all social questions these days, has little to say about labor, oppression, compensation or collective bargaining. The supposed liberation heralded by those who promote free culture is winner-take-all; exploit or be exploited, as long as you share your code. Anderson concedes this point, acknowledging that if we “measure success in terms of the creation of vast sums of wealth spread among more than a few people, Free can’t yet compare to Paid.” Unless artists and their allies organize themselves, it never will. Until then, those who have dreamed up a way to cheat an entire category of workers and call it democracy will get to pose as political radicals, happily cashing their paychecks while telling others to work for nothing.
(h/t )
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/153682282792
