I recently finished reading author Andrew Keen's scathing critique of new media and online culture, The Cult of the Amateur. I highly recommend this eye-opening and well-researched, if extremely negative, one-sided and self-important, investigation into the media trends of the past couple of decades. Even if you disagree with Keen, which I do, you cannot help but appreciate his point of view and the extremely valid issues he addresses.
Keen concludes, somewhat morbidly, that modern culture is doomed by rampant, unchecked technological advancements--technology that, he claims, empowers the "amateur" to such a degree that the expert and the specialist are drowned out by the cacophony of "amateurs" with uncontrolled access to new media. His core argument is that the massive setback to the modern American music industry caused by internet piracy through peer-to-peer file sharing software and by low prices from online media retailers like iTunes and Amazon.com is representative of the threat posed to traditional culture by the internet. He suggests that the internet promotes a culture that encourages plagiarism, piracy, remixing and mashing up of traditional media, and he self-righteously condemns what he deems to be widespread trends towards copyright infringement and the trampling of the intellectual property rights of professional artistes.
This is where I feel compelled to interject and present the opposite side of the picture. True, Andrew Keen presents a well-researched, well thought out argument and makes his case very convincingly, but for all his ranting, he neglects to mention one very critical point which, for me at least, clinches the argument for the opposing point of view.
This may not apply to everyone, but to the select few who have a genuine creative impulse and who have taken time out of their busy lives to be creative in some way--whether it means writing a book or a screenplay or making an independent film or composing and recording a song-only to find their creative efforts stymied and obstructed--even plagiarized and ripped off--by "traditional, mainstream, professional" media and culture--to these select few, new media and the internet are a boon.
Hollywood, for example, is full of aspiring screenwriters--pretty much everyone has written a screenplay or two if they have lived in Tinsel Town. Most screenplays, it goes without saying, are pretty shoddy and mediocre--but a few are excellent.
But let us suppose, hypothetically, that you happen to be such an aspiring screenwriter in Hollywood and that you have written a couple of screenplays. Arguably, they are pretty average efforts, but they do have some original ideas and sparks of brilliance. So you decide to shop them around because you never know--some agent or studio just might pick up on one of them. Time goes by and your efforts prove to be fruitless.
Then, one fine day, you head to the movies to catch the latest, hot new film release. As you watch it, lo and behold, it appears to become more and more familiar to you. You experience an odd sense of deja-vu as the film you are watching seems more and more like an old friend disguised by some elaborate costume. Then, gradually, recognition dawns--the scenes, the key characters-they are all so familiar because you created them! That's your screenplay up on the screen--remixed and mashed up, to be sure, but plagiarized and ripped-off, all the same, by mainstream Hollywood!
Outraged by the copyright infringement (because your screenplays are all copyrighted, of course, under US copyright law) and the transgression of your intellectual property rights, you are determined to sue! But good luck taking on the major studios like Universal Pictures or Paramount or Warner Bros., all of whom have millions of dollars and an army of lawyers at their disposal, while you are a solitary individual working 9-5 to make ends meet!
This is where new media enters the picture. Thanks to new media and the internet, you now have a voice! You can make yourself heard! If Hollywood or the mainstream media establishment has ever ripped you off (which they do all the time to consumers and aspiring artistes alike), then you can voice your outrage online, and there's a pretty good chance that someone will give you an empathetic ear. Furthermore, thanks to new media, you now have a creative outlet independent of the media establishment. You can pursue your creative interests and, with some luck and ingenuity, perhaps even turn them into lucrative pursuits.
Not long ago, CNN news legend, Larry King, had a mock-contest with TV and film personality Ashton Kutcher to see who could make a million "friends" on Twitter first. In a mock video aired on his CNN show, Larry King taunted Kutcher with the words (more or less):
"CNN is an organization. You are just one person. You don't stand a chance. We will bury you!"Sure, it was all in good humor--but even so, it was a telling moment. In Larry King's world--the world of traditional media--the individual does not stand a chance against the giant media organization. But what is even more telling is that Kutcher eventually did beat out CNN and won the arguable distinction of being crowned "The King of Twitter." In the world of new media, the individual can take on the giant media conglomerate and, perhaps, even win. Sure, Ashton Kutcher being crowned "King of Twitter" is, ultimately, not to be taken seriously, while Larry King's show on CNN remains the news fixture that it has been for decades--but the symbolic importance of this moment cannot be denied. Thanks to new media, the individual can take on the monolithic, faceless media organization and even come out on top.
So, in response to Andrew Keen's well-researched and brilliantly argued case against new media, my counter-argument is a simple one--that new media empowers the individual in unprecedented ways so much so that the individual voice can actually be heard even against the blaring megaphone of traditional media screaming non-stop into one's ears (metaphorically speaking).
The fact is that new media and the internet represents a cultural paradigm shift of an unprecedented, unimaginable scale. Not since the inventions of the codex and printing has there been anything close in all of history--and new media dwarfs even those cultural advances, in my opinion. The relative novelty of new media, compared to centuries of tradition accumulated by traditional media, means that the onset of new media resembles the chaos of a Tsunami. As for what the future holds, it is impossible to say. It could well stimulate the biggest surge in human creativity that we have ever seen in all of history.
When the printing press enabled literature to escape the confines of the small minority of the educated, privileged few and become universally accessible, I have no doubt that alongside the profusion of classics that achieved widespread publication was a surge of literary trash and smut that deluged the print markets. And no doubt, that age probably had its own critics who, like Andrew Keen, in a fit of negativity, decried the collapse of civilization to be brought on by the technological advancement of printing. However, ultimately, civilization won out and was enriched by the freedom of creative expression afforded by this new technology.
By the same token, I strongly believe that, in the end, human creativity and the aspiration after excellence will win out over trash and bad taste. In the end, the gambling and pornographic websites, the online anarchists and purveyors of bad taste will be washed away by the cleansing tides of history, but creative excellence will endure and civilization will be enriched in the long run.
Horizon Cybermedia aims to be at the forefront of technological trends and creative excellence. Join us in our quest as we continue to bring you creative content of the highest quality and standards in the ongoing technological revolution that is new media.
Meanwhile, check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com/ for the latest episodes in our ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar.
Wishing you the very best,
Uday Gunjikar,
Founder and CEO,
Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.
To learn more about Horizon Cybermedia and Exploration with Uday Gunjikar visit http://www.explorationtheseries.com/
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