It's like chilis in soup:
a little goes a long way, and too much spoils the broth.
From the Luther Bible to the first phonorecords, from radio to
the pulps, from cable to MP3, the world has shown that its first
preference for new media is its "democratic-ness" -- the ease
with which it can reproduced.
(And please, before we get any farther, forget all that business
about how the Internet's copying model is more disruptive than
the technologies that proceeded it. For Christ's sake, the
Vaudeville performers who sued Marconi for inventing the radio
had to go from a regime where they had *one hundred percent*
control over who could get into the theater and hear them perform
to a regime where they had *zero* percent control over who could
build or acquire a radio and tune into a recording of them
performing. For that matter, look at the difference between a
monkish Bible and a Luther Bible -- next to that phase-change,
Napster is peanuts)
Back to democratic-ness. Every successful new medium has traded
off its artifact-ness -- the degree to which it was populated by
bespoke hunks of atoms, cleverly nailed together by master
craftspeople -- for ease of reproduction. Piano rolls weren't as
expressive as good piano players, but they scaled better -- as
did radio broadcasts, pulp magazines, and MP3s.
Pages:
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42