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Many of the problems that plagued
our media system before the Internet

The Peoples was widely adopted have carried over

into the digital domain consolida-

Platform: tion, centralization, and commercialism

C.S. Lewis memorably wrote that art and phi-
losophy have no survival value but, rather,
give value to survival. - in other words, the
substance of what we call human culture-
The kind of value he had in mind, of course,
was spiritual. And yet half a century later,
weve stifled our way into a system that as-
sesses art and philosophy and human culture
for their economic value as market commodi-
ties- theyve been reduced to that depress-
ingly derogatory term for cultural material:
CONTENT.
Writer, activist, documentary filmmaker, and cau-
tious idealist Astra Taylor talks about the things
that give value to human survival in her manifesto
for the survival of our cultural commons-
The Peoples Platform: Taking Back
Power and Culture in the Digital Age.
Taylor writes: As a consequence of the Internet,
it is assumed that traditional gatekeepers will
crumble and middlemen will wither. The new or-
thodoxy envisions the Web as a kind of Robin
Hood, stealing audience and influence away from
the big and giving to the small. Networked tech-
nologies will put professionals and amateurs on an
even playing field, or even give the latter an advan-
tage. Artists and writers will thrive without institu-
tional backing, able to reach their audiences di-
rectly. A golden age of sharing and collaboration
will be ushered in, modeled on Wikipedia and
open source software...In many wonderful ways
this is the world we have been waiting for. [But] in
some crucial respects the standard assumptions
about the Internets inevitable effects have misled
us.
The argument regarding the internets impact, Tay-
lor notes, has become bereft of nuance and has
settled into one of two camps from which sound-
bites are fired at the other- techno-skeptics ad-
monish us that weve become a herd of skim-
mers, staying in the shallows of incessant stimula-
tion, while techno-optimists assure us that were
evolving into expert synthesizers and multi-
taskers, smarter than ever before. Such polariza-
tion- like all polarization- seems rather impoverish-
ing. Much of it pits technology against humanism
and ask wholly different questions rather than pro-
viding different answers to the same question.
Taylor notes:
These questions are important, but the way they
are framed tends to make technology too central,
granting agency to tools while sidestepping the
thorny issue of the larger social structures in which
we and our technologies are embedded.
The term New media is a misnomer that implies
both a counterpoint to and a supplanting of old
media and yet this is hardly the case.
and will continue to shape it. Net-
worked technologies do not resolve the
contradictions between art and com-
merce, but rather make commercialism
less visible and more pervasive The
pressure to be quick, to appeal to the
broadest possible public, to be sensa-
tional, to seek easy celebrity, to be at-
tractive to corporate sponsorsthese
forces multiply online where every click
can be measured, every piece of data
mined, every view marketed against.
Originality and depth eat away at prof-
its online, where faster fortunes are
made by aggregating work done by
others, attracting eyeballs and ad reve-
nue as a result.
...Technology alone cannot deliver the cultural
transformation we have been waiting for; instead,
we need to first understand and then address the
underlying social and economic forces that shape
it. Only then can we make good on the unprece-
dented opportunity the Internet offers and begin to
make the ideal of a more inclusive and equitable
culture a reality. If we want the Internet to truly be
a peoples platform, we will have to work to make
it so.
Taylor admonishes that the artists,
writers, and other craftspeople of cul-
ture are being shortchanged by the
machinery of
commercial interest and corporate
power.
Astra Taylor writes:
Wealth and power are shifting to those
who control the platforms on which all of
us create, consume, and connect...
Cultural products are increasingly
valuable only insofar as they serve as a
kind of signal generator from which
data can be mined. The real profits
flow not to the people who fill the plat-
forms where audiences congregate
and communicate the content crea-
tors- but to those who own them...
During this crucial moment of cultural and
economic restructuring, artists themselves
have been curiously absent from a conversa-
tion dominated by executives, academics,
and entrepreneurs.
Some artists, of course, are raising their heads
and challenging the this is how it should be done,
because this is how it has always been done
paradigm of cultures relationship with commerce.
And yet, pointing to another realm where weve
lost our sense of nuance, Taylor argues that in our
fetishism of openness at all costs- that is, at no
cost- weve forgotten the actual, physical, ines-
capably tangible costs of creating what we desig-
nate by the ethereal term culture.
When we talk about the cultural commons, it
should be self-evident that production is a pre-
condition of access. An article needs to be re-
searched and written before it can be read; a can-
vas must be painted before it can be shown. Yet
we live in a society oddly reluctant to recognize
that this is the case. Dominant economic theories
emphasize exchange: the value of a good has
nothing to do with how it was made but, instead,
the price it can command in the marketplace.
And when we try to break with the market to talk
about gift economies, bestowing as opposed to
buying, we still focus on the way things circulate
rather than how they are created. More often than
not, those who speak enthusiastically about the
cultural commons stay safely inside what Karl
Marx called the noisy sphere of consumption,
where everything takes place in full view of
everyone, instead of descending into the hidden
abode of production, which in fact shapes our
world even if we choose to look the other way.
This means we are telling only half the story.
In addition to the purely technical costs of cultural
production of course, is the human labor- the
time, thought, and love of bringing something to
life- something meant to exist not because it is
marketable but because it matters. Forming a
complex ecosystem of costs.
A material reality supports the digital commons in
all its facets: hardware, infrastructure, and con-
tent...
Creativity and commerce have a complex relation-
ship and, in many ways, a necessary one. None-
theless, a market in creative goods is different
from creative marketing, and the latter is growing
at the expense of the former.
-People Platform continues next page

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