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Originally Posted by Moejoe
You're right, partially, but wrong about the distribution channels. Those channels were not around ten years ago. We didn't have the prevalence of BT, we certainly didn't have FEEDBOOKS for writers, and going back to writers again, we didn't have any standardized ebook formats as we have now with ePub or any ebook readers like the Sony or Kindle. You're only NOT seeing evidence of this great creative work because you're not looking for it. Your eyes are still on the channels they've always been upon.
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Your assumptions will get the better of you.
I was browsing the internet in 1994, and before that usenet. I was reading books on a Psion 5mx ten years ago (daylight readable and 20+hours on a set of batteries.. we haven't got so far since). Web comics? Check. Whole book series on hand crafted web pages? Check. MP3s? My band put tracks online ten years ago last month.
You talk as though EPub is allowing people to do something new - HTML and (god help us) even Microsoft Word were there first, by a long, long margin. Feedbooks? Try Usenet - which I remember browsing for content twenty years ago. From the point of view of an author, we're not on the cusp of a new paradigm, we've been living it for years. If you want to create, you can't do anything now that you couldn't do a decade ago.
Of course the availability has improved - there is a wider audience, if you can gain their attention. The tools have also improved to a lesser extent. However, it's not unreasonable to extrapolate from those early populations and see where it gets us. I'm quite certain the answer is - not as far as the utopians would like to believe.
Taking Feedbooks as an example. In the 100 most recently added books, there is exactly one author that has released a book written in the last ten years - all of the remaining entries are from the previous century or before. Is that the sign of a new paradigm bursting with creativity?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
You're still looking toward the big corps to provide you the entertainment, these are your trusted sources. And no, it's not all 'cat' videos and cliched science fiction. It's beautiful magical realism by people like Kelly Link and Benjamin Rosenblum, it's anarchic animated video game reviews every wednesday with Zero Punctuation, it's exciting community based endeavours like Everyblock (they just went open source by the by), its Twitter hashtags and mashups of old videos to new beats. There aren't enough hours in the day to enjoy independently created entertainment. It's all very exciting, it's all very worhwhile, but hey, if that's not your thing, no problem.
The corps are waiting for you. They have market-tested, focus-grouped, products they would like to sell you. Same as it was, same as it shall be.
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If you're putting up Twitter as a sign of cultural enrichment, I think we might have to agree our views differ. Yes, I have a Twitter account, linked with my blog, webpages and facebook. No, I don't believe they represent a form of entertainment so much as a subsititute for weaker social bonds on the personal level. Given the sheer magnitude of people online right now, the fact that you're still listing individual sites of mention points to the fact that freedom to create does not equate to a healthy cultural ecosystem.
We have a thousand million monkeys, and a thousand million typewriters... where are the thousand Shakespeares?