Economy or Culture?

Has it come down to a choice?

Very rarely before the modern age has economy, the idea of becoming rich, been the driving force for artists. Artists of all stripes were often poor, living on the streets until a wealthy patron raised them up - both for the entertainment of the rich, but also for the enrichment of the human species and the variety of human culture. It could be kings or pharaohs, counts or industrialists, it didn't matter who they were, but rather what they did.

Today we find that artists, especially within music and film (the theater of a new age), are receiving enormous amounts of money in exchange for their art. Their culture has ceased to be art and has become a commodity to be traded and sold for the economic benefit of the creator, but mainly the company behind it.

Many young people today strive towards becoming musicians or actors not because they are captivated by culture and art, but because they are enthralled by the lives these so-called superstars live. We see riches beyond our imagination being portrayed as part and parcel of the artist and our dreams turn towards those riches. Art is no longer a passion, it is merely a tool by which you achieve your wealth.

Some might argue that the superstars of today are indeed the royality of yesteryore, but is this really the truth? Have the super-artists become the patrons, acting as shining beacons for the hopeful masses of passionate artists who await the chance to be raised up as well?

I would be inclined to disagree, for the artists of today aren't helping "lesser" artists up from the streets so that they are able to perform or create. They act more as shining beacons for greed and the burning desire to acquire wealth, being the posterchildren for a rampant capitalism which has infected even the performance of culture.

The idea of the superstar coupled with the capitalistic drive of modern media corporations to continously produce wealth for its shareholders has formed a basis for art and culture which isn't conducive for human growth and expansion. We are becoming trapped in a mainstream media society where we are limited to experiencing only the forms of culture these corporations believe will produce the greatest revenue.

Patronage - the lost craft?

Over the last centuries of western civilisation, the idea of the patron has been ever present, economy being the keeper of the arts and culture of humanity. But we find that throughout time, the richest of mankind have lifted up artists and scientists to further themselves, but also their culture and civilisation.

From the Roman mecenate and the Medici family of the Italian Renaissance to Andrew Carnegie and his thesis on the necessity of rich people becoming patrons in "The Gospel of Wealth". But in a time when capitalism is the one and only driving force behind giant media corporations, have we lost the benevolent patron of the arts and seen him replaced by an almost mercenary hunter of wealth?

Carnegie suggests that this patronage of both arts and science is the responsibility of those who acquire wealth, but this clashes with the basic idea of capitalism - to maximize profits in any way possible. But at the same time, we find that a few of the worlds richest people still take the time to donate money to arts and science - but they are few in number and becoming fewer by the day.

The powerful media magnates of today are not patrons of the arts (or sciences for that matter), they are more like powerful warlords on a crusade to garner wealth. A capitalistic warlord needs to be ruthless, needs to be able to sacrifice those beneath him for the benefit of the goal. When the goal becomes personal and capitalistic enrichment, the sacrifices become even more enticing. Where is the modern patron of the arts?

A solution...

A viable solution is actually presenting itself over the Internet. More and more people are given the tools to produce art and culture by themselves and we aren't far from a world where every man, woman and child has the digital tools available to produce a movie, an album or write and publish a book. The sheer number of newly fangled creators could be interprented as a sign that these people aren't doing it for the money, but for the newfound joy of creating media.

What these artists need is the protection from patrons of the arts (and sciences), protection both from legal and commercial interests, as well as protection from obscurity in the form of, preferably free, ways to distribute this new media being produces. These new artists need new, more effective, platforms to distribute their art, no matter if it is photographs, paintings, music, movies or games.

The second necessity is that we must understand that all culture is in one way or another based of the culture which came before. Thus, the more exposure people have to culture in all its forms (music, art, films, books) the better the foundations will be for them to stand on. But today this necessity is once again stopped by restrictive copyright laws enforced by the same capitalistic companies which rule the cultural field today.

The digital age allows us to copy and share culture and art in all its forms without causing any form of material loss to the creators, thus granting the millions of potential artists a powerful inspirational tool. A tool which is available to them at no cost for the original creators, as well as being a powerful tool for their own distribution later on.

The one and only problem for spreading this tidal wave of possible inspiration is an overtly restrictive copyright, which strangles the lone individuals possibilities to be inspired and thus minimizes the chances of them becoming artists in turn. This evolution would greatly benefit the media corporations because at the moment the new artists would distribute their culture outside of the given channels, robbing the media of their share of any potential wealth.

So, given that the corporations of today stand only to profit from discouraging new artists to be inspired and create their own forms of culture, we need the protection and influence of powerful patrons, people who are ready to help the artists without any personal gain beyond being associated with the artists or solutions they help.

Mind over Media?

In todays society and culture we face a world where media becomes more and more invasive and almost all-pervasive. From free magazines given to us at the street corner to the commercials on the bus, we are living in an age of the divine information. The adage that 'knowledge is power' has been transformed into 'information is God' and as a westernized culture we strive to consume more and more information.

Entertainment, generally through media, has become the virtual resting place for our minds as we withdraw from an almost overpowering array of information to numb ourselves for a while so that we may continue consuming information. At the same time, the media is gradually intertwining information with entertainment, or simply creating information for our consumption.

Information has become a source of great revenue, both in the form of learning of how human behavior dictates where ad money is best spent, to being the honey which draws us like bees to consume it while at the same time exposing us to advertising and commercials.

With information and entertainment being the two of the main economic wheels of western civilization, we are also specializing our community at large. To be able to work in a society where more and more is related to information or entertainment, we need to consume it. Without this crucial understanding of the relationship between media and ourselves, we loose contact, both socially and culturally.

But media has isn't only present when it comes to our jobs or forming a societal basis from which we can relate to each other and communicate, it is also present in our homes and families. Children are brought up with an almost instant access to information via the Internet and an almost equally instant access to entertainment through movies, TV and video games. Even if we want to distance ourselves at home, some other member of our family or friends, will tend towards bringing the media back into our lives.

Coupled with how digitalized information allows corporations to monitor what we do, what we buy, where we go, with whom we do this, at what times and for what money, we are seeing a society where the media producers have a higher degree of insight into our private lives than ever before. Taking this information and using it together with psychoanalysis, consumer analysis and even sociocultural analysis provides the corporations in question with a frightening insight into who we are.

This has lead us into a world where the media world sets not only the stage for our western culture, but also the beat to which it dances. Fashion is set by the creations of superstars and people can become superstars not because they actually achieve something but because they are adept at creating an image. Like Lasch points out in Changing modes of making it "celebrity - the reward of those who project a vivid or pleasing exterior or have otherwise attracted attention to themselves - is acclaimed in the news media, in gossip columns, on talk shows, in magazines devoted to 'personalities'.

Media is the tool as well as the creator, forming the image itself as well as utilizing the effects the formation of this image has on society. A new superstar is born in the blink of an eye, and within months this superstar is selling books, clothes, jewelry, perfume - becoming a business and an icon in and off itself. Their very existence helps 'create' news which we can consume, helps write miles of columns discussing this image and helps to sell media all over again.

We never question who created this superstar, never question why he or she is given so much acclaim. We are taught to consume from an early age and to aspire to become as close as possible to these stars, these images created by the very media which benefits from our consumption. But to ensure that we as individuals retain our mental freedom there is something missing, an essential tool.

The requirement to consume media in the form of information and entertainment together with the fact that media and the corporations producing media is invading more and more of our privacy creates a culture where there is one overarching need for a tool which the citizen can utilize - the ability to be able to filter this onslaught of information with a critical mind.

It is also the one tool which too few western citizens have managed to develop, instead relying on media conglomerates to do their filtering for them and thereby allowing them to set the stage for all kinds of information as well as disinformation. If we trust a company, whose only goal is to produce more revenue for its shareholders, to provide us with accurate and truthful information we are deliberately fooling ourselves.

One way of providing and almost forcing the media consumer of the western world today to focus on whatever information they are receiving can be achieved by multiplying the number of media producers and distributors. If people, instead of corporations, produce and distribute media we will see a rising number of people who must take a stand and make a choice to whom they should listen to, who they should trust.

While the formation of truts is based partially on how we perceive people, it is also based equally on personal safety. When we trust people, we make ourselves vulnerable to them and therefore it becomes a natural step for someone extending their trust to evaluate the ones they are going to trust. This evaluation of who we trust and why is also the sliver of self-help we can utilize.

By giving people multiple sources of information, as well as multiple distributors we make it easier for different points of view surfacing into the general public, thus making people decide for themselves who they should trust or not. Once a person understands that a single event can be portrayed differently as well as spread differently depending on who first encountered it as well as their intentions, pinpointed by the fact that people will tell the same story differently, we have the basic foundations of the critical mind.

Thus, the best way to ensure that the common western citizen of today is able to look at the world at large with a critical mind is to help forth a larger number of media producers and distributors. The best way to ensure that these new media producers and distributors are diverse is by empowering all of humanity to do this - for example by giving them the tools they need to produce and distribute.

The New Media

For decades the media as we know it has been run and dictated by economic giants, media corporations with more money and influence than we even like to think about. Today Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is one of the largest media giants with its media covering everything, from radio and TV, to newspapers and websites, throughout the western world as well as being one of the major players in Asia. His control of what media is produced, dispersed and consumed is almost absolute.

This oligopoly of the media could be closer to it's end than anyone would expect. The huge media corporations which for so long have controlled not only what media we can consume, but also how and when we consume them, are loosing a little bit of that precious control.

A furious digital and technological development has given the general western citizen the tools and means to produce media and broadcast it. The Internet today is facing it's largest revolution since its inception, called 'Web 2.0' by those who focus only on the technological aspects of what is happening. The biggest trends and websites are those which empower the common man, giving them the keys to both the production and dispersement of information and entertainment.

The tools to do it ourselves

YouTube is a newborn giant on the Internet, giving people the tools to spread and share their 'televised' media in the form of small shows, documentaries, insightful reports and discussions. Flickr does the same but for photographs while DeviantArt empowers the digital and traditional artists, both contributing together to give the common man the tools to spread their views, their information and their work. Blogs, like the ones available through Blogger, allows everyone with access to a computer an easy tool to publish their ideas, their information and entertainment.

So, how is this revolutionizing the media world as we know it? Because the media corporations are no longer the sole providers of information and entertainment. Today we are seeing more and more sources for news, documentaries and investigative reporting than ever before. Blogs are becoming the newspapers of today and the televisions of tomorrow through the use of easy access online video.

Podcasting, creating downloadable audio files for blogging, is quickly becoming a new source for audio information and entertainment for a whole generation. This development might potentially lead us towards a new form of radio where we choose our own mix of music and hosts, created at home or through subscriptions online.

The Internet has become an integrated part of the everyday life of the western youth. Young adults are downloading movies and music while the industry is in a tumult trying to halt the natural evolution of cultural media as we know it. But whereas they see it as infringing on their immaterial rights, are we not simply seeing an old dinosaur raging at how evolution has cheated them? New and more dedicated ways of sharing information and entertainment not only takes away power from giant corporations, it empowers the common man.

More and more musicians and authors are given a chance to be heard and read by a larger audience as the Internet spreads. They have been given the tools through computer programs not only to create their own personal brand of cultural media, but to spread what they have created. The musician now has programs which help them record their own music at home, without having to toady to corporations. Corporations with no interest for music in itself but with an inhuman interest for what can generate revenue.

The recent uprising in so-called "pirate movements" and their organisation using the Internet as a foundation is a testament to how much the common western citizen cares about how media is dispersed throughout the globe. If these pirate movements are even somewhat successful we will see a monumental change in how media is shared between the consumers, once again undermining the current traditional ideas of media is meant to be consumed.

Other non-profit organisations like the Creative Commons and Free Software Foundation work within the confines of current copyright laws to promote a change in how people think and act when it comes to most types of media, including software like the operating systems of the PCs most westerners use today.

This new evolution of how the different types of media is produced, dispersed and consumed will affect a great change in the economic aspects of the media industry as well, changing how the media conglomerates of today are organised and how they generate profit. Advertising will most probbaly become the major revenue source since the media giants will no longer be the ones controlling the copyright of the media which is being consumed.

Since the economics will no longer be based on copyright but on advertising it stands to reason that it will become more important for the media companies to support a wide base of media which the consumers can utilize, while at the same time taking advantage of the Long Tail syndrome detailed in the last decade by Chris Anderson. The basis of the Long Tail is that the aggregate of lower popularity items is greater than the total of the more popular items, no matter what kind of media they are.

The shape of things to come

Even though the shape of media isn't changing since we are still listening, reading and watching, the form and content of the media is. With more and more sources of information to consider and consume, we are forced into a situation where we must learn how to filter media once again. Once we start filtering for ourselves it is we who determine who we trust, it is our choice which defines the information we receive, not that of a news corporation or media conglomerate.

To learn how to filter the increasing amount of information coming to us from multiple sources of media will be like a child learning to filter out the myriad sounds his ear picks up. It will probably not be a conscious filtering, but rather a subconscioous filtering predetermined by our existing morals and views, who we trust and distrust.

But even if the filtering in itself will be subconscious, the simple existance of such a filtering will make people less inclined to believe everything they hear, see or read. The new generations will hopefully be able to distinguish better between propaganda, no matter it's form, and more unbiased information produced without a specific idea to promote.

This, in and off itself, is the one most important revolution we will be facing in the future, the first steps of giving the western citizen the tools to begin thinking more for himself and stop accepting the information he receives without a critical eye to who is giving him this information, who produced it and for what purpose.