The Internet Fad
The rapid explosion of Internet technologies is usually taken as unprecedented. I have not shared that opinion, because it seems to me to be “just another technology,” in terms of its utility to the average person. Some people were quick to adopt, while others were not. Technologies are constructed and fall into disuse in pace with their perceived utility. A case in point would be the invention of movable type by the Chinese, with its minimal use and slow spread to Western Europe. Western Europe found the technology more useful, and thus it literally exploded within a relatively short span of time.
The view of technological innovation as the product of “necessity” is easily thwarted— invention is more likely the mother of “perceived necessity” rather than the other way around. However, received histories tend to amplify this aspect—that a technology is created to suit a need rather than providing a more accurate appraisal of the “needs” created by the technology. As another case, one might consider the birth of “information wants to be free” after the invention of the Internet. Suddenly, the “need” for access becomes a driving issue, which, though present, was not necessarily foregrounded in most discussions of print-based technology. The issue was separate, a matter for those in control of the printing and dissemination of works, not for the general public who consumed the works. Closing the gap between producer and consumer created new necessities. Information doesn’t want anything. The public that uses it does.
The Chinese public did not have a need for standardized texts; the Western Christian public did. The Western public has been notoriously unconcerned about who “owns” or profits from texts as long as texts were something traded exclusively in a marketplace. Content owners and publishers do care—but the general public has no problem with consuming knock-offs, or with prohibitions against their sale. It just doesn’t matter that much to them. Internet technology has changed this, at least to some degree.
The Internet can be conceived (and has been) as a distribution channel for content owners and providers, or it can be conceived as a giant public square where everyone can generate content and share rather than sell it. These “needs” are in conflict with each other, and thus no one who views the utility of the Internet as something closer to a telephone (purchased by monthly contract with reasonable use limitations, used occasionally as a public pay-per-use convenience) instead of a jukebox (stick the coin in the slot at all times before receiving service) can ignore the “fencing” of the public square.
However, those most vocal in the defense of “free culture” amplify the public need as the only need that the Internet serves. The recent Pew surveys show that the majority of users use the Internet in the same way they use a mall—to buy things. Given that, the needs of the corporations outweigh the needs of the few active content creators working outside the establishment. The jukebox model is winning, not just because of the corporate need but also the behavior of the mass of public users who happily buy from the iTunes store, or subscribe to Rhapsody. The situation doesn’t look good. Whether the future is negotiated by the RIAA or “the public” the outcome seems to be much the same. The Internet is a market-driven technology.
It looks worse through the lens of Lessig’s creative historiography. I keep returning to one sentence in Free Culture:
The technological change that made mass photography possible didn't happen until 1888, and was the creation of a single man.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Photography was a mass phenomenon from its inception. It was not difficult, and kits for budding hobbyists were on sale within the first three years. Public classes were held for nominal fees, and the American people, hard hit by depressions, were quick to try their hand at it. George Eastman capitalized on the “need” for photography created by years of rhetoric about photography. He wasn’t the first to market a cheap camera—but he was the first to take the technological mystery out of it, akin to Blogger’s “Push-button publishing for the people.”
Amateur photography was diluted and died in this country some time in the 1960s. One might chart the rise and fall of Kodak’s stock as an indicator. The same thing could happen with Internet publishing. The new “creative class,” driven in part by the social nature of the Internet, could just as easily be a bubble similar to that popped by rising prices in photofinishing and competing video technologies. It is a complex problem without easy solution. No single man created the creative need to pursue photography, any more than any single cause promoted its demise. Democracy, and the importance of free expression are not sufficient to create the “need” that burgeoning social software must fill to survive into the future. The situation is hardly without precedent. The “Blogosphere” could share the fate of “camera clubs,” closed due to a lack of interest.
April 4, 2005 8:28 PM
