Open Media: Taking Old Fartism Down

Unlike any previous information conduits, Open Media are conceived, developed and dominated by the young, especially college kids with access to high-speed bandwidth and teenagers with lots of time and expertise. Change or die time. Third in a series.

This youth domination has been true of no other mass medium -- adolescents and post-adolescents shaping an information structure they know more about than almost any sub-set of adults.

A first-rate piece in Brill's Content 's August issue, by writer Austin Bunn, reports on a soon-to-be-released HomeNet study, scheduled for publication this winter in the journal Human Computer Interaction. It documents in society-at-large what's been clear for some time on the most vibrant Open Media websites -- online, the young are shaping information culture. They are the gurus, visionaries, technicians, repairpersons and authorities on the Information Revolution. There are plenty of older Net visionaries and users as well, but they don't dominate open media in the way the middle-aged have always dominated information before.

While politicians and journalists have been clucking about sex, isolation and the decline of Western civilization, younger people -- teens through 30s especially -- have been acquiring and mastering computing technology. So-called "games," messaging systems, and free music and software-sharing sites have served as their universities and career ladders, indoctrinating a generation into the most sophisticated and powerful information systems ever seen. The spread of broadband online access to universities and private homes has been a huge spur, driving younger people online, providing the opportunity to learn and experiment once they got there. Napster is one well-known example. So are ICQ, Gnutella and C-Net, and this site. Lesser-known and more specialized OM sites include chickclickers.com and myvideogames.com, or the pioneeer weblog www.camworld.com.

This adolescent and post-adolescent technical expertise, writes Bunn, has translated into a broader cultural savvy, upending the traditional power balance, inspiring college students to found their own companies, reducing parents, journalists, teachers, CEO's, teachers and other adult authority figures to bystanders. For generations, Dad was the household figure who knew how things worked. Now he and Mom have to ask their kids. For even longer, media was run by aging and imperious white men who decided what was news and what wasn't. Today, these media movers and shakers are desperate, scrambling to find anybody who can tell them what's going on. Usually, the person they're asking is under 30.

These Open Media sites -- weblogs, webpages, messaging systems, software -- sharing and research communities -- are increasingly founded by the young, a trend with mind-boggling implications. These kids have grown up with the Internet; they know intuitively how to use technology. And they have radically different cultural, political, technological and social sensibilities.

According to a May study by the Pew Center for Media Research, roughly half of American families now have Internet access. There are also more Americans turning 18 now than ever before, points out William Strauss, author of "Millenials Rising: The Next Generation." The approximately 78 million Americans aged 21 and younger account for 28 per cent of the population. What TV was to the Boomers, computers are to their children. This evolutionary demographic is behind much of the rise in Open Media.

Whatever their commonality as members of the Open Media, the differences in these emerging sites are striking. Open Media embraces interactivity -- they reflect ideas, commentary and information from a wide range of sources, especially their readers. They don't merely provide the occasional link to other sites on the Web, as traditional sites. Rather, they use the Net infrastructure to make links an organic part of their content. They aggressively ask their readers to help set editorial agendas. Each reader becomes a highly-wired reporter, foraging on his or her own favorite sites, seeking particular kinds of information.

Using mostly digital transmissions, stories get spotted, suggested and linked to by readers. Readers also have access to the editorial figures on the website. Through story input, moderation or discussion forums they have a say in how the site operates.

Rather than divide a site into pay-versus-free areas, revenue comes from advertising, the sale of specialized merchandise, or other sources. But the information itself is almost always free, moving continuously through the site like a river. These young new media entrepeneurs embrace popular culture as strongly as technology. They gather almost continuously to discuss movies, TV shows, certain magazines and books.

Diversity is rarely as big an issue as it is for their parents. Possibly because of the anonymity possible online, or perhaps because of natural social evolution, differences in race, religion and sexual orientation rarely come up. They are comfortable talking about sex. They've experienced almost total freedom of expression online, much more than older Americans have. If this trend continues, this generation may free itself --- and its editorial agenda -- from many of the issues that dominated their parents' lives of their parents.

They are almost totally disconnected from the mainstream political and media system -- the network newscasts, major newspapers, TV talk shows and political events that dominate conventional, closed media. Such subjects rarely surface on Open Media sites. Yet despite the inherently democratic nature of their media creations, their lack of interest in the larger political structure is already posing problems and challenges.

Young Netizens seem flabbergasted when the adult value system collides with and changes their world -- in arguments over copyright and Napster or the passage of laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. They don't seem to grasp that their lack of political acumen and organizing skills not only make such legislation possible but increasingly inevitable in encounters with a legal and political system dominated by those older and non-technologically-centered.

Understandably, the architects of this new media are arrogant. At the epicenter of one of the most revolutionary technological advances ever, they know much more about it than parents, teachers, journalists or politicians. They discovered early on that many of the people who lecture about them and their culture are clueless, and they learned to ignore moral posturing and hectoring. As a result, they'll form their own moral code in their own good time, apart from conventional social, religious and cultural values. As yet, no single value system has emerged beyond some libertarian notions about government and freedom.

They are free-marketeers and democrats. They are comfortable making money, unabashed about taking entrepeneurial risks (the Brill's Content article focuses on 13-year-old Ilya Anopolsky, founder of the Web-design firm Devotion, Inc., as well as Michael Furdyk, 18-year-old founder and business development manager of BuyBuddy.com.

Although today's Net-connected youth are denounced for being technology-addicted or socially isolated, the truth is they use the Net and the Web to communicate with one another, not to disconnect. For them, the Net is a social as well as a technological medium. They gather in chat rooms, on mailing lists and messaging systems and form enduring relationships that frequently last for years.

This generation of media engineers celebrates the accessibility of traditionally out-of-reach information. They have literally grown up downloading music, text, and almost every other conceivable form of intellectual property. Branded "pirates" by corporatists and politicians, they grasp what much of American society hasn't yet comprehended -- they posess the technological skills to gather all the information they want, and no authority has yet amassed an equivalent amount of expertise to slow them down or stop them.

Comments

Cliche

[NetFu]

This is a good example of the perpetuation of a relatively old internet "cliche" -- the "adolescent internet guru" vs. the "old fart luddite".

Bullshit.

If you still believe this in the year 2000, you are delusioned. Severely. The "old farts" are running the brick-and-mortar institutions that are either kicking the e-tailer's asses or buying them out. How can this be if they are run by stupid "old fart luddites"?

Oh yeah, and look at the brain-drain of employees running from crashing internet start-ups to work at more solid electronics companies or even "old economy" companies. Yeah, if you believe the cliche at the top of this post, you probably thought that XYZ start-up with the 17-23 year old founder was going to skyrocket.

Sorry, but the reality is that age doesn't matter. I know 50 year-old company CEO's/Presidents who are more 'net-savvy than many e-commerce consultants they talk to. If you're intelligent and "have the right stuff" it doesn't matter what your age is, you will rise above your competitors every time.

Re:Cliche

[kootch]

agreed. what Katz seems to be saying, but not realizing or admitting, is that the web gives a platform for every angst ridden, lonely and confused teenager to stand up and tell the world where to stick it in their own way.

so the young are the ones making the most news. that doesn't mean that more people read their "open news" than CNN or the Times (companies that are run by old grey-hairs). yes, the young usually have a better grasp on the technology, and the old grey hairs often hire those young under 30 yuppies, but they also put them in positions where the old grey hairs have the last say because they know how to make money with their product.

That doesn't mean that there aren't times that the young blood doesn't come up with the great idea to make tons of money, or totally replace the old. but just as the old has to learn to move with the young, the young has to learn that there are rules and that sometimes if you play by the rules, you come out much richer.

look at what happened with all of those internet IPO's started up by people that were in their early 20's. Most have gone belly-up or have hired old grey hairs to run their company.

Shows you that BOTH sides have something to learn, that the young won't replace the old, and that if you think Open Media is the next big thing, you're sadly mistaken because for the "New Media" to get recognized, it has to conform to "Old Media" rules and become part of the mainstream media.

Re:Open Fartism

[Golias]

Damn closing link. Trying again:

For Katz to imply that old media is doomed (in spite of the wild success of printed magazines targeting every imaginable niche market), and that sites like Teen Movie Critic are the future is so silly that I can't even take it seriously enough to thoughtfully point out how horribly, horribly wrong so much of his column is... so I will just fire off a couple of smart-assed questions.

Does the term "Open Media" imply that we are welcome to take his rough drafts, make a few changes, and sell them as our own under the GPL?

If there is such a thing as "Old Fartism", what exactly does an Old Fartist believe?

Is there also a New Fartism? Or perhaps a Reformed Fartism?

Katz, does it bother you that your whole column is dripping with the same sappy sentiment as the opening lines of "The Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston?

Next generation

[Hard_Code]

Down with Old Fartism! Up with Pop Superficiality! Rah!...er something...I can't concentrate...I think I need a Pepsi...

Boiling it all down...

[Chris Worth]

Open Media - and let's face it, the Internet in general - is based on a simple premise: say what you like, but be prepared to have people talk back to you.

It's this point that old media doesn't get. I've worked in ad agencies for years, and not one of them accepts that to be part of the Net, you've got to play by the Net's rules.

Chris @ chrisworth.com

Media is media is media

[jd]

There =IS= no "new media" or "old media". A medium is simply the method by which information is transferred. Who does the transferring, and how, is utterly irrelevent, in the end.

In many ways, it's like TCP/IP. You DON'T need to know all the little settings you can play with in the header to be able to call up a web page, or an FTP site. Even if you do, and you do submit bug fixes back to the TCP/IP stack maintainer, it really won't alter what you see on those web pages.

To hear Jon Katz talk, you'd believe that the Student Union in England never existed. That Radio Caroline and other infamous, long-lasting "pirate radio" were never there. That multicasting had never been developed. That no Special Interest Group has ever written it's own newspaper or run it's own community radio station.

To call anyone older than a teenager an "Old Fart" is not only extremely derogatory (older people were once teenagers themselves, and some are quite capable of matching any teenager on the planet for originality and creativity) but also extremely stupid, divisive, hostile and presumptuous.

The reason the generations don't usually get along is because of incited hatred between them, as if they were factions at war. But when you look at more "primitive" civilisations, you see cultures where there IS no generation war, where people trade and exchange thoughts WITHOUT REGARD for age, gender, or other modern extremist inventions.

And that's what the age divide IS. An extremist invention. It has NO place in a civilised society, bar that which we choose to give it.

IMHO, Jon Katz is becoming as hateful of the imagined enemy as he imagines the enemy to be of those he supports. I suggest seeing a doctor, as that degree of paranoia and hostility rarely does anything but grow. Especially in a mind that has been cultivated for it.

Change or die.

[Anonymous Coward]

Change or die.
Jon, please don't change.

Serious Reply

[11223]

Sure, these kids can download any content they want, but what's the worth of it? If all they're downloading is pr0n, what's the point of all of it? The problem is that this Open Media has grasped quantity, but not yet quality. I have yet to see one web site that offers me the quality of information and in-depth reporting that my hard-copy of Time magazine does - and that's not saying much, given how Time acts lately.

The problem is that it is the old geezers who are running the Time magazine, and as such they know how to write, how to formulate an article, etc. What comes out of this Open Media is garbage because it's run by a bunch of kiddies who know nothing of content and quality. It pure-and-simple rubbish - quantity, and not quality.

Of course, this observation isn't as sensationalistic or otherwise hypeable as an Open Media article. There aren't any broad sweeping futuristic predictions in all of this. So, to make this sound more sensationalistic, I'd like to say that JonKatz is a horrible writer. Who taught you how to write?

This is new?

[gitm_tym]

As I recall, the Steves, Jobs and Wozniak were both post-adolescent 30 years ago when they started building their Apple computers. Also, Bill Gates was in a similar position when he went to work designing a DOS for the Altair.

Oh, I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't mention people that actually made money. :P

Having had a personal computer and been highly involved in the computer 'world' for the last 20 years, it has always been starkly apparent that the young are the main innovators. The only thing that has changed is that the general public is now aware of this, and finds it confusing somehow.

gitm

a new elite?

[mblase]

[Young Netizens] don't seem to grasp that their lack of political acumen and organizing skills not only make such legislation possible but increasingly inevitable in encounters with a legal and political system dominated by those older and non-technologically-centered.

This is intriguing, especially since one of the most frequently-cited reasons Microsoft is in the antitrust quagmire it's in now is because they were very late in getting lobbyists into Congress, presumably due to a hubris that their power over software would be enough. Is it possible that the technology-centric members of society will increasingly allow "the laws of the Net" to be their law, regardless of what their governments say? Will society someday be divided into the law-abiding neo-Luddites and the self-regulating technologists? (And most importantly, will William Gibson or Neal Stephenson publish another novel based on this premise?)