Our Culture (high and popular) is usually created by people who are
happy with the systems the world has given them. Magazine editors don’t
spend a lot of time wishing for better technology. Opera singers focus
more on their singing than on microphone technologies. Novelists
proudly use typewriters.
Sure, there are exceptions like Les Paul
(who developed the electric guitar) and Mitch Miller (who invented
reverb) but these exceptions prove the rule: often, culture is invented
by people who are too busy to seek out new technology.
(The
bottom left corner of the grid shows the tech-phobic culture-phobic
contingent. Not relevant to this discussion so much, but scary
nonetheless).
If you take a look at this chart, you can see the
danger anyone who introduces new technology faces. While you’ll attract
Les Paul and the 37Signals guys, you’re more likely to attract
spammers, scammers, opportunity seekers and others that will bring our
culture down as easily as they’ll bring it up.
The challenge is
in designing structures and transparency that will attract the good
guys while burying or repelling those that seek the new technology
(because they can’t find anywhere else to go). In other words, you
either need to move the top left to the top right (not easy, but
possible*), or educate the bottom left of the grid in how to contribute
to the culture (really difficult indeed).
The best new media (like
blogs and possibly twitter) open doors to people who didn’t used to
have a voice. The worst ones (like blogs and possibly twitter) merely
create new venues for scams and senseless yelling.
*The
much-anticipated folding of Gourmet magazine is proof of what happens
when the top left refuses to move right. Most of the Conde Nast empire
is facing the abyss of this problem right now.
