The black swan (Nassim Taleb) p29-31
People with idea type jobs are at risk over people with labor type jobs eg singer vs baker
Before recording audio (storing information) a lesser known singer still had an audience, so you could say they were still a labor type job, ie they were required at every performance (there was no scalability yet.)
With the advent of storing information (gramaphone, printing press, etc…) the singer/writers job changed into an IDEA type job, as it could be replicated or performed to lots of people without the singer needing to perform each time, or without the writer needing to write the book each time.
But this was detrimental to lesser known artists, who may never get a chance for success because popular artists can nearly take the whole pie (people’s attention) without even being alive.
Nassim Taleb says, “It is hard for us to accept that people do not fall in love with works of art only for their own sake, but also in order to feel that they belong to a community. By imitating we get closer to others-that is, other imitators. It fights solitude.”
—MY THOUGHTS—
Is the result of information storage killing culture and the well being of others in the IDEA’S industry? Or is it language, as how would we store information onto a distributable medium if we didn’t have language to express it?
Further to this, now that we have distributable commodified ideas, the influence of advertising and marketing (and a sponsor) can afford to sway or brainwash a culture.
When we look at native cultures they have language, but they don’t commodify their ideas, resulting in a culture that is unchanged and stable, and pass on knowledge orally.
Whereas modern society, chose to commodify and distribute their ideas, which later turned into selling ideas, creating demand for the idea supply…maybe this is the captialism of ideas. This path has meant that our culture manifested away from the spirit into full blown materialism.
Without massive dissemination information sources such as: TV, books, CD’s, what did people do in earlier days? I think they may have had less lavious houses and went out a lot instead, socialising…you needed to go out to socialise and be entertained.
Nowadays you can be entertained at home, on the train, as you walk (listening to your headphones), and you can socialise they same way (eg. phone, web).
The pursuit of information storage has allowed a culture to be dominated or homogenised. It has also allowed a culture to socialise in a removed kind of way, as we don’t need to be amongst a crowd to socailise or be entertained.
Has the pursuit since information storage and dissemination been for the better? I like the that the spread of books allowed all people to be empowered, but it made it hard for some artists to be heard over others, that is their thin slice of audience virtually became no audience.
What if we didn’t have the printing press today, would most of culture still be naive to lots of things? Is it OK to not have a progress mentality like native cultures? I think the spreading of ideas is a good thing, but in a capitalist society it’s more about the selling than the ideas.
I think web 2.0 is bringing us back full circle where we can still spread ideas, but there is a long tail where all ideas have a chance to be heard, it’s scalable to all people. Now lesser known writers and musicians can still have their slice of the pie.
Without information storage (programming) the industrial revolution couldn’t happen at the scale it has, which has led us down this “slave to the machine” path…”tails wagging dogs”…what does progress mean?
Are we in this bind because since information storage the idea market was dominated by the popular and the marketable and the rich? If web 2.0 was around when information was first stored and disseminated, we would of had a scalable idea market, everyone would be heard, therefore would of we prevented ourselves from going down the capitalist invest and grow path of no real meaning except progress?
A progress culture seems a real burden, and what do we personally and globally get out of it? A native culture is more about being, very much more intune.
What is this whole agenda?
