Play the game but don’t believe in it–that part you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a straight jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way–part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy.”
Ellison, Ralph
Chances are you’re playing the game, so what is your raise?
Such a development would in turn damage the quality of research, they argue, by allowing articles that have not gone through a rigorous process of peer review to be broadcast on the Internet as easily as a video clip of Britney Spears’s latest hairdo. – NYT: At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web
As digital distribution breaks apart traditional content forms, you’re going to hear all sorts of whining about how harmful it will be. “Downloads ruin the sanctity of the album.” “Blogs aren’t as objective as real journalists.” “They’ll never replace the smell of a good book.” The fact of the matter is that all these “forms” exist as a function of the physical constraints of distribution. It is extremely dangerous to assume that “they way things were” is and will continue to be the best or the most reliable. Rarely do traditions resulting from a lack of options rest upon solid foundations. Now that the restraints have been released, change must happen.
In the case of scholarly journals, they existed in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries because it was only way to widely distribute mid-length content. Papers couldn’t be sold individually so they had to be packaged and packaging creates gatekeepers and “respected” publications. The idea that a paper is credible only if published in certain journals came second the physical realities. Distribution dictated the process, not the other way around. Albums are the same. If they weren’t, the so called “classics” would be downloaded evenly instead of one or two tracks disparately more popular. The concept of a local newspaper was created in a time where the events in another community had little relevance to the reader. And the economic structure was designed with that in mind. The way we format movie scripts is based on the assumption that all writers are using a typewriter.
We made the best possible system based on the environment we faced. Today, the marketplace is fundamentally different, so it is time to do it again. That’s all. The rest is just short-sighted people complaining because a powershift effects them personally. They’re too attached to a system to see its glaring flaws.
The thing I think we can learn from these comical protests over forces we can’t control is that you shouldn’t ever base your identity on external factors. Otherwise, you’re a slave. And you look like a jackass longing for an ideal that never really existed in the first place.
From one of my favorite books…
The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others–the living–are those who have pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and and Later.
But the edge is still Out There. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles and LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means of to an end, to the place of definitions.
Here’s what I have learned about edges: They are neither as dramatic or cool as Thompson makes them out to be. I think he’s totally right, they can be really scary. The only people that can tell you about them have crossed a chasm that makes it impossible to ever relate to The Way Things Were.
But if you go around associating them with motorcycles and cliffs and Capital Letters, you’re going to miss all the little ones that are right there in front of you. And you’ll forget all the others you already had the balls to cross and didn’t even know about.
