Image via Wikipedia
Given our emphasis in this module on the future of arts & culture (work), I direct you to a thoughtful and wide-ranging post by Dave Allen (formerly of music groups Gang of Four & Shriekback, now of ‘brand agency’ North). He dissects and interrogates all sorts of ideas and approaches about the future—largely with a digital inflection, but not technophilic at all. I’ll try to steer us toward other resources as well, and don’t forget to check out the Diigo resources tagged for Module 4!
Dave Allen’s reference to “Small, forward thinking shops” reminded me of E.F. Shumacher’s book “Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.” In this collection of essays Shumacher articulates a vision supporting small, appropriate technologies that promote participatory organizations as opposed to the idea that “bigger is better”.
Plato worried about how writing was emptying the words of people’s souls by disconnecting them from living speakers. I imagine this shift was so scary because it was shifting people’s primary means of communication and as people our primary existence is to communicate. If you shift communication you shift people and if you shift people then we might start freaking out and loosing ourselves and what are we if we aren’t ourselves? I never thought of a shift to digital as as shift once again to a more oral tradition. Of documenting oral conversation (I also had no idea that all tweets are recorded through the library of congress…interesting). Perhaps Plato would enjoy the internet- an oral and written compromise. I understand that change is natural, the river is always flowing, but i just can’t talk about the river as some entity that is the same type of current in front of everyone standing on the shoreline. I think some parts can be very stagnate, perhaps because that is the natural landscape of the area or perhaps because some people with more authority built a dam or are steeling the water. Okay, so my point is yes change is ongoing and change in communication is just as natural as any change but types of change and the rate of change is not universal and I think that is important to acknowledge. So many factors in everything. One there is for certain though: Gang of Four is an awesome band.
Also, I really love this Radiolab podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/nov/16/idea-time-come/
It talks about the link between the evolution of life and the evolution of technology. They point out that it is hard, and perhaps impossible, to even imagine a technological advancement before it’s time. That humans evolve based on the the tools they have but also the conceptual leaps they make. They suggest hat only when the human environment is ready for technology will technology be able to be developed. In this sense, we will always be ready for what we have because it was only made possible by our created tools and ability to conceptually actualize what we are creating.
@Jamie- Great point/insight about the river metaphor: not all of the river is moving all the time, so depending on where you plant yourself at any given point you’ll experience a very particular “rate” or even kind of change. And, yes, Gang of Four is awesome…
@Doug- Thanks for the reference…
I imagine the future of art and culture in society to remain fundamentally essential as a source of shaping our identity. Art will always be part of the means through which we experience the past and imagine the future. As time progresses the art world has become everyones business and will be more in the future. According to The Nonsense Society, (http://www.nonsensesociety.com/2012/06/art/) the world is tired of artistic elites, it doesn’t care how many degrees the artist has, but cares for what the artist can offer its audience. It advocates for the artists who can teach themselves through endless information provided by modern technology so that at the end they can produce inspiring art works. The argument sounds fine, but still college education as very fundamental in shaping the art world, because the future demands more people in education to enable artists produce work that relates to changing society, (the society of modern technology). Culture will evolve with society as new ideas emerge. We all deal with ideas and act a culture befitting the situation of the time. Today’s generation is a computer world, and culture in now evolving around information technology. Today’s art also follows the same trend (technology), because IT is impacting our world. The ‘quantum leap communication hypothesis’ suggests that the magnitude of culture change is proportional to the amount of communication increase. Therefore a big increment in todays communication flows is and will continue to produce big culture changes.
The transmedia experience/materials will shape the future by changing the means of reaching/communicating with people (audience). The behavior of the audience is changing with the high rate of digital use. This change in return is shaping the environment we are living in. That is why we are involved in everything that goes on by sharing and exchanging information on anything that is around us. We all agreed in class that as media managers we should strive to tell the story the way our audience wants to hear it and where he wants to engage in it. In the end, it not what you tell/deliver, but how you tell/deliver it. That is how transmedia will shape the future.