3 Responses to “The Barnes and Noble Debate - “Cult of the Amateur””

1. srini:
   August 9th, 2007 at 4:03 am

   early adopters force the tools to do something they need them desperately to do. the tools get better, then the mainstream gets hold of them. the trouble is that the mainstream is not that talented but thus empowered easily drive the early adopters out of the old media. maybe a few gems emerge from he chaos but warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame is today down to fifteen seconds. this is not the way to make either money or your mark on history. and not all early adopters have the technical ability or desire to jump ahead to the next paradigm.

   this guy’s argument is simply that major media outlets can add value in society. they shelter and promote crazy artists like steely dan, norman mailer, david foster wallace and the white stripes, whose books and music would have been denied to almost everyone if it weren’t for big publishers/labels. when most people think of the major media, they think of fox news and get all pissed off. i think it is important to look into the past and find artists we never would have heard of if it weren’t for major labels and big publishers promoting them. we live in a revved up society compared to the one we grew up in, and as a result a lot of quality art isn’t making it to the kind of audience it would need to be catalytic for society.

2. Jason B:
   August 9th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

   I think that the point should be clarified - the internet and new media are killing culture for the consumer and for the consumer revenue channel. It’s absolutely great (if not necessarily profitable) for those of us who are producing creative content and are looking for collaborators. I’m a much happier member of society even if I never see a cent from my work. If that puts all the mainstream-driven content creators out of business, too bad. Everyone’s forgotten that prior to the mass media, folks were figuring out their own ways to keep themselves entertained.

3. hasty toweling:
   August 17th, 2007 at 5:06 am

   As this conversation applies to art, the situation must be similar to where painters found themselves after the invention of the camera. Who needs portrait painters when you can just take a snapshot? And won’t paintings in general lose their value when quality copies can be produced at will? Indeed, with a few exceptions, painters lost some prestige and now the “starving artist” cliche applies very aptly to them. Has the quality of painting gone down in the intervening years? With a few notable exceptions, it seems to me that the DaVinci’s of the world are out of business.

   Two things can be noted from this. First, although it is sad in a way, it does no good to complain about it. The painting profession will never be what it was and the technology that made it less profitable isn’t going away. Second, that same technology opened up entirely new media for artists to express themselves in. Not only photography, but also film. Consider how much of an impact that movies have on our lives and ask yourself whether or not it was worth displacing painting.

   The idea that information technology, whose power is doubling every couple of years, won’t produce new outlets for expression seems to me naive in the extreme. Have a little foresight people! In the coming decades, computing and the internet will be millions of times more effective. Perhaps virtual environments will displace film and recorded music as the premiere artistic medium?

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