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Amateur Revolution?
Ant writes "Fast Company's article mentions that networks of amateurs are displacing the pros and spawning some of the greatest innovations from from astronomy to computing. Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion. Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft. The Sims is among the most popular computer games ever. These far-flung developments have all been driven by Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs working to professional standards. Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades."
Rap, for one, started as do-it-yourself music among lower-income black men from distressed urban neighborhoods, recorded by artists on inexpensive equipment and distributed on handmade tapes by local labels. Yet within two decades, rap has become the dominant popular music across the world. In league with Pro-Am music distribution made possible by Napster and Kazaa, it has turned the entire record industry on its head.
;)
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, "hoes", problems with the law, etc. I don't see the difference between rap stars and more "traditional" music. I give this one 0/100.
Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community, a distributed, self-organizing group whose players are constantly training one another and innovating.
I suppose you could say that's why it is successful. I honestly believe that Quake was so very successful because people could play it the way they wanted to but I still think that the original game had a lot to do with it. If the base gameplay isn't all that great why would people be interested in building on that? I give this one 50/100.
Some professionals will find that unsettling; they will seek to defend their monopolies. The more enlightened will understand that the landscape is changing. Knowledge is widely distributed, not controlled in a few ivory towers. The most powerful organizations will enable professionals and amateurs to combine distributed know-how to solve complex problems.
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Pro-Am activity will continue to expand. Longer healthy life spans will allow people in their forties and fifties to start taking up Pro-Am activities as second careers. Rising participation in education will give people skills to pursue those activities. New media and technology enable Pro-Ams to organize.
Perhaps it has to do more with intelligent people understanding that they don't appreciate what's going on in the coporate world and they realize that they can at least do a little bit to start change in motion. I am not saying that they will get very far before the corporations do what they can to make the "amateurs" lives miserable but at least it gets the ball rolling.
Pro-Ams could fuel mass participation in formal politics and in social entrepreneurship.
No they most certainly will not. Not unless these "amateurs" get the election process changed to a reality TV style format. People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though
From the blurb:
Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades.
Corporations, their money, and their slaves will continue to reshape society via their direct control over multiple media outlets (solidified TV/news, radio, Internet) not the public. Grass-roots campaigns have always existed on the fringe and while their causes are noble the masses love to be sheep while thinking they aren't.
You know, by EVIL CORPORATIONS!! Patents and Copyrights are the tools of the DEVIL that THE MAN uses to keep the little guy down! This story is absolute bunk!!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What a load of bullshit. Those guys take themselves much too serious. "will help reshape society in the next two decades" ? Yeah, right ...
It just goes to show that while money can motivate people, passion for the work is a better motivator.
42
For me the difficult part is this - how do you define "professional" and "amateur"? Do you have to be an MCSE to be considered a computing professional? Do you simply have to be paid to do something to be considered a "professional"?
...where does this guy pull this crap? A few isolated events and he's predicting a world-changing trend? Geeze...
Blar.
I realize that many fields are easily accessible to amateurs, yet others remain obviously out of reach. Compare this to selling lemonade on the street corner.
In many fields there is independent innovation. In electronics, for instance, people have been home-brewing radios, amplifiers, computers, etc.. for seemingly forever.
Hoewever, it is technologically and physically impossible to build a cyclotron in your back yard. (Though if memory serves me properly, people have tried to build nuclear reactors from smoke alarm materials in the past).
As always there is a limit to what independents can do by themselves, but that limit is always expanding with newly available tech.
- Strydre -
The Sims is created and supported by EA, a company which has become like the Microsoft / Cisco / Computer Associates of the gaming world: they buy up as many companies as possible so they can profit off the licenses.
The Sims is an excellent game and has a very large fanbase, but don't discount the influence of its very powerful parent company.
For more information, click here.
The article says that in the past a lot of amatuers where displaced by people who had the right bits of paper to say they could do it. Today a lot the amatuers actually have those bits of paper, for example how many Linux programmers have computer science degrees or even some lower level computing qualification.
Jon Katz? Is that you in there??
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
We anarchists have been talking about this phenomena for many years. We refer to it as DIY: Do-It-Yourself. Linux and amatuer astronomy are examples of anarchism in action--international networks of volunteers and hobbyists cooperating together and providing mutual aid and solidarity to each other. It's interesting that Fast Company has finally gotten around to providing a capitalist spin on this phenomenon, but otherwise we're talking about anarchism in action. Which is one reason why major corporations fear these movements, especially Microsoft.
That's right. It all started with the 2000 election...
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, "hoes", problems with the law, etc. I don't see the difference between rap stars and more "traditional" music. I give this one 0/100.
It doesn't matter what genre you're talking about, there are going to be groups that exploit their popularity the way you said above (bitches and hoes), and there are going to be genuine artists. My roomate forced me to listen to one of his favorite hip-hop groups last weekend. Their entire album was freestyle, but I didn't hear anything about "bling", "ho's" or cars. He was a genuine artist more interested in the realities of life than hip hop fame, which is what it boils down to for every genre.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though
I've wondered about this, too.
I mean, if I had the access to people willing to act in an amatuer porn movie, the first thing I'd do is hop over to asstr.org (NSFW, duh), dig out some plot outlines from the stories there, and at least get a half decent plotline.
I sppreciate the sentiment of the article, but many contributors to open source are hardly 'amateurs'. Plenty of OS contributors are paid for their work.
I'll take this mean 'amateurs' in the same way that the atheletes at the olympics are 'amateurs'. Amateurs, sure... but they are also at the top of their craft.
But of course, amateurs do at times spawn some totally unfeasible and fairy-tale like ideas.
1. Hire amateurs/hacks while firing seasoned professionals.
2. ???????
3. PROFIT!!!!
Wow thanks for the news that matters & stuff, now
who is this company, how fast are they really?
Are they quantum geek enabled, or warp factor 5 capable?
Is there a slowcompany? If so what is their spin on this posting from fastcompany??
Until some major type of revolution happens, the two will co-exist... assuming the small-fry want to keep their independance.
Take homestarrunner.com, my favorite example. They have turned down offers for tv shows and the like, simply because they want full control. I havnt seen any major corp go after them for, well, anything!
no
My summary of the article was: "The people of the world will rise up and destroy the evil empire created by the economics of scarcity!"
My response is "No little commie, economics will not just disappear because a given field/industry is much more accessable now."
That amateurs can contribute is, in large part, due to the steady price deflation of equipment, especially equipment based on semiconductors. Declines in the cost of a near-studio quality audio rig, software engineering workstation, or a good quality CCD astrophotography camera make these tools accessible. Low cost chips that enable the networking of the amateurs (remember when 2400 baud dial-up was charged by the minute?) so they can work together.
Thank You Gordon Moore!
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Many people, myself included, participate in processes outside of their normal career function at the "amateur" level but at the "professional" standards level as a release from what they do as a normal profession. There are sometimes more rewards to this function of operation than what money can bring and that is the case for me.
When amateurs begin to do it for profit, they become pros.
At least not any more amatuer then Windows developers. There are plenty of people that develope applications for windows AND linux in their spare time.
But characterizing Linux developers as amatures is deceptive.
There are quite a few that do it for free, but for the vast majority they actually do get paid for the work that they do. One way or another.
Of course people like the kernel developers get snapped up to go work for big companies, and Linus is a millionare...
Think about it. Say you have a large company that depends on a free database app for your core. Like, say, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
Now if your working with MS for MS SQL you have tech support, if something goes wrong you talk to person after person as your problem gets escalated. Eventually, if you pay enough, you may actually have a very knowlegable MS person come out and do hands on help with you. However if you hire a Linux hacker, you have part of the team that does the actual developement on the software that you use working for you. Just a phone call away and he is probably almost personal freinds with the rest of the team and can contact other developers for you.
Not only for problems, but for functionality.
Stuff like that is why many do get paid.
But there are plenty that don't get paid for their work, directly....
Depends on what exactly you mean by "Pro". Many people devote their life to hacking, lots like Olympic athlets devote their time to being amature althets.
Not to say that Linux developers are the cream of the crop, nessicarially. They range the whole gammat from the weekend warrior, to the 15 year old kid that sits on the computer all day, to the professional highly skilled and specialist hacker working on breakthru stuff.
What I think is more of the "amature" revolution, is more about the regular guy standing up and getting noticed for their contributions for the first time.
People tend to think that it's all big business, or government research or university studies that get progress done. That's wrong. 75% of business is small business in the US,and I'd bet that 90% of everything new in the US comes from individuals persuing their dreams.
Artists, programmers, athletes, businessmen. Working on their own for their dreams.
Linux is just one of many examples of this happening.
I don't think this is something new. Think about punk music. I think it was a reaction to professionalim.
"Copernicus, who moved the sun to the center of the universe, was only a sometime astronomer."
the sun is in the center of the solar system, not the universe.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
And it has now become the same money-hungry scheme that the rest of music is. Silver teeth, 80 gram bling, expensive cars, big houses, hoes, problems with the law, etc. I dont see the difference between rap stars and more traditional music. I give this one 0/100.
I was just thinking about this yesterday, when I didn't recognize 1 of the top 5 songs in the country. A radio show was listing them and playing clips, and I knew a couple of the names, but the songs didn't ring a bell. I thought they were all terrible, and I happen to like nearly all kinds of music including rap.
But here is my take on rap - it is in its "disco era". Think about it - Rock and Roll had its roots in the 50s. The 60s were rebellion, and what some consider to be the heart of rock music. The 70s started to slide, we then got Disco. The 80s was an attempt to rebound from that, and alternative music was born.
Rap has its roots in the early 80s. I would call the late 80s/early 90s the "60s" of rap. It really showed that it wasn't going away and made a mark on the world. But I think that we are now in the Disco age of rap, where it is all just posing and people trying to cash in. For the most part, the art and creativity is out the window. I just wonder what the "80s" of rap will bring.
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Rap, for one, started as do-it-yourself music among lower-income black men from distressed urban neighborhoods, recorded by artists on inexpensive equipment and distributed on handmade tapes by local labels. Yet within two decades, rap has become the dominant popular music across the world."
Two decades ago... when Run DMC "walk this way" with Aerosmith, right? Can't get much more amateur than that.
Rap? "... the dominant popular music across the world." I don't think so. Maybe if you include the various ins-and-outs of hip-hop and pop-hop, you get closer... but still, I wouldn't call it dominant.
"Likewise, according to one estimate, 90% of the content in The Sims is created by a Pro-Am sector of The Sims ' playing community."
I'd guess at least 90% of the worlds video games are created by amateurs. Doesn't mean that they have 90% of the audience, not by a long shot.
It doesn't help that the article's author is a one trick pony... For months, years, whatever, Charles Leadbeater has been doing this "Amareur Revolution" crying, just check google. I'm not sure what would make this article stand out.
"People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship."
n in gReading/howprwor.htm
I think you'll find that's because their voices are unheard. In America, in Britain, your vote doesn't count. Turnout and engagement is correspondingly low.
If you take a look at the democracies of Europe however, people are far more engaged in politics and the turnouts during elections are on average far higher than the US or UK. That's because their voice can be heard, every vote counts...
The difference is proportional representation:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/Beginn
Deleted
"Amatuers" have been displacing "Pros" forever. Whenever someone does something good, other people will come along and make it better, its not bad but its not something new to our generation.
50 years ago the FEC railroad took on the entire US.
The Florida East Coast has demonstrated how much you can do if you allow yourself not to be constrained by the way things have been done. You see all kinds of things done unconventionally on the FEC, at all levels-in the mechanical department, in operations, in the yards. One reason for this is that they brought in 'inexperienced' people instead of embracing the institutionalized verities that were there before them. Conventional wisdom went out the window, where it so often belongs." -FEC president W. L. Thornton
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
The submitter appears to have misspelled 'infects'.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion. Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft. The Sims is among the most popular computer games ever. These far-flung developments have all been driven by Pro-Ams
<sigh> and then there is Slashdot...
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
In much the same way that over-paying 20-something year old ameteur html coders did not create a "new economy" so this too will fizzle.
Most notably, Rap has not been an ameteur medium since the time when public enemy became big and the labels decided to push it. Unless you are an affancido (sp?) of Rap, none of the people you have heard of are 'ameteurs' except in the artifically created sense that eminem, vanilla ice, the village people and the monkees are 'ameteurs'. Rap has been a slick, professional and tightly-controlled form of expression for almost two fucking decades now.
Mod me flamebait if you like, but as someone who's lived through the "grunge", the "alternative" and the "internet" revolutions this -to me- stinks to high heaven of yet more masturbatory and self-congratulatory hot air.
Which is appropriate, as the "revolution" being touted signifies nothing.
But you cannot discount rap any longer. It truly comes from the grassroots and I think fits the intent of this article. Now the STATE of rap is questionable, but I don't think you can question its legitimacy and power.
I don't discount the "power" that rap holds in the music world. What I do discount is that it is still a rebellion against traditional music. They are just a different genre. They certainly aren't fighting "The Man".
When I first saw that list, I was thinking all of things were at one time amateur (and still may be at some level) but are now more or less commercial. We're runnign redhat, essentially a fork of Linux that gets a lot of upstream stuff. Rap is now big time commercial (I knew it was gone when I heard a radio commercial for a local micro-brewery with the "German Brewmesiter Rap"). Russel Simmons and Puffy have no qualms about saying they want to create rap empires, super commercial. THe only change is the mix of who owns what.
"Amateur" is sometimes used as an insult, to mean something isn't very good, and many companies tout themselves as being "professional" i.e. good.
But is the distinction really true? There are many artists that failed to make a living from their art during their lifetime. Does that make them amateurs?
And I think that some of the MS certified "professionals" I've met really don't deserve the name...
There is no way you can compare many of the tech folks working on various projects (e.g. Linux) as "amateurs". Most of the developers on these projects are indeed professionals, the simple act of working on a non-corp sponsered app doesn't make one an amateur. That's like saying the the NBA "dream team" members are amateur's by virtue of them playing on a non-professional team at the time.
Well, I hate to turn your +5 Funny into a serious point, but you're not wrong. The proliferation of amateur porn is seriously affecting the adult industry (to the extent that, like Microsoft's Shared Source, they're spending a lot of time and effort trying to copy it).
Mainstream porn was polished and shiny but largely generic and non-innovative. Every film was kinda samey, every sex scene following the recipe. (Blow job -> doggy -> RC Anal -> Pop shot).
Nor sadly, is it all that sexy, unless you're turned on by a bunch of over-inflated bimbettes faking orgasms and engaging in anal gapes or bukkake. Fine for the anorak, kinda repulsive for the rest of us who want couples erotica.
But, like free software[0], or punk or low-fi or rap, genuine homemade amateur porn gave us something to connect to; a level of reality and recognisability that made it -- well relevant isn't quite the word, but at least relateable to.
[0] OK, I admit, this analogy is a bit of a reach
And if you think I'm posting this logged in, you are *so* wrong.
L'Angelo Mysterioso
After reading that article, the question arises: What exactly is the difference between a "professional" and an "amateur?"
In my view, there is none. Both groups are comprised of people devoted to their crafts, with the knowledge and passion to succeed. It may be that professionals are more likely to have learned their crafts under the tutelage of a master craftsman or through some sort of schooling, while an amateur is more likely to have learned his trade "on his own" but in most cases, there is a large crossover. Many professionals learned their trade themselves without much tutelage and many amateurs actually have some formal training in their field.
Rather than say it's a professional vs. amateur situation, I'd be more likely to term it as a for-a-living/on-your-spare-time type of thing, because oftentime, being labeled an amateur means that you somehow don't know as much as a professional, but that is often wrong. It's more that they are all professionals, but some do it just for a paycheck or recognition, some do it just because they love it, but (hopefully) most do it for both.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Analogy's are no replacement for original ideas.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
come on people :
"Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion"
is somehow a sign of the world being caught up in a revolution? Rap is a sign that easy-to-manage concepts go over well with the populace. Hip-hop? Yeah, some of it is tolerable, but none of it will be viewed as masterpieces in years to come. There is no skill or effort in most of it. The people that create and listen to it are not capable of the introspection necessary to create masterpieces or even view them in the proper light later.
You can call it racist, elitist, or whatever you want, but rappers, rap "music", and rap fans are not leading any cultural revolution. They are enforcing the status quo. They buy their CDs, their videos, their jerseys, their 200 dollar sneakers, and keep the fatcats laughing all the way to the bank. The only social activities that they participate in are the ones espoused by their idols, namely drinking, getting high, killing each other, and in general being a goddamned moron. They are not like the 60's and 70's, where the music reflected a movement ( be it anti-war, civil rights, whatever the fuck ). They are cashing in on their stupid fans, promoting ignorance, all under a guise of a movement. If you think the corp execs haven't figured out a whole new level of subterfuge and manipulation, you're kidding yourself.
We're not dealing with the people who thought American Bandstand was about as wild as it would come. We're dealing with MBA-touting, marketing-aware, bloodsucking weasels that are more than willing to take a crack dealer who can string together a few rhyming compositions, give him world-class studio time, and sell him and his merchandise to a bunch of fools. They'll tell you it's a revolution, that you're changing the world, but you know what, money talks, bullshit walks. You're still making the same old conservative power mongers, they've just got their monkey-dancing rappers and dumbshit teen-idols out there turning tricks for them. I suppose I'm happier seeing conservative old white men running things than I am seeing crack-dealing uneducated rap stars, but it's still a far cry from a real option for progress.
We've already lost the media. It's a cash machine, nothing else.
The revolution will not be televised. And it will not be led by anyone named after currency.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
That's it. That's all there is to it.
There's the implication of better quality work or a better attitude, but in reality that has nothing to do with professional/amateur status.
Deleted
Maybe applying a buzzword to something is a good way to kill the movement, ie Metrosexual, Latin-Invasion (Musically, not immigration issues), etc.
I dont think Pro-Am has enough synergy to be a value-rich commodity.
In a larger scale analysis, the speed of targeted communications has always determined the speed of advancement throughout history.
Examples abound:
- Greek military advancements (Phalanx) - after city-states bonded, writing popular
- Renaissance - after plague's social dislocation allowed workers to travel, talk
- Renaissance (multiple causes)- after Guttenburg / printing press allowed/instigated mass literacy
- Galileo's experiments - after mail is regularly possible between him and many other scientists
- Industrial revolution - after enough discoveries, shared by scientists mailing each other, built on each other's work to create steam power and other major inventions
- Edison's "invention factory" putting bright minds and enough tools all in one Menlo Park building complex
- FireFly TV show - computing machinery advanced enough to simulate other worlds coupled with good writing (though, the Profoundly Evil (Murdoch's) Fox 'targeted' communication with NeoCon fundamentalists means 'advancement' sometimes == social regression / repression)
This list is incomplete but gives an idea.When people can talk with other people interested in the same things, easily, quickly, and in an organized manner, the rate of change (advancement, usually)(viewed through their eyes) can really increase.
This is a danger as well as a blessing. Every society has malcontents / miscreants / criminals, and (just remember junior high school) sometimes the only thing holding them back is the encouragement of one really inventive and charismatic bad guy/gal.
I, for one, welcome our newfound Pro-Am Inventor Overlords!
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
When a technology is immature, almost everybody is working at the leading edge whether they want to or not. Two examples I can think of are cars and computers.
There was a time when automotive technology was still relatively new and cars had become cheap enough that many people could buy them. Most people had something like a Model T and they had to tinker with it to keep it running. The result was that there were many car tinkerers who were quite adept. My 1930 Dynes Automotive Encyclopedia shows how to turn your old (by then) Model T into something like a hot rod. It was pretty easy.
The same thing happened with computers. IBM brought out the PC and you had to become reasonably adept even to run one. Lots of people did become adept and lots of innovation came out of garages and basements. My brother made a mint on a product he developed.
As the technology matures, it becomes harder and harder to innovate. One of the reasons, (but maybe not even the most important one.) is that you run afoul of entrenched corporate and government interests. Then, you just move on to the next thing.
I agree that things like software patents and monopolies like Microsoft are bad for innovation and if they totally stifle it, it will kill the economy. I think our worse enemy is things like the Patriot Act and DMCA.
Many of these people are not really amateurs. Some of them are making a living at these pursuits, although admittedly not as good a living as the so-called professionals.
What is happening is that cheap technology is negating the advantage that Big Corporate Money gives to corporations or to business people who have some serious capital, either personal monies or loaned monies.
I cannot overstate how great this makes me feel or how important it is.
I see much of human interaction in the economic marketplace, in the world of employment and jobs and commerce, as akin to interactions in animal society, especially the way that social animals interact, and in animal sibling interactions.
In America, at least, it all comes to nature, red of tooth and claw.
What happens is that the more powerful entities use current advantage, monetary advantage, to snuff out competition, and then, ironically, they call it the "free market."
You see many examples of this: one young male in the lion pride was get bigger than the others, and use that advantage to drive off the other males, and then mate with the females.
But cheap technology is like some sort of vitamin supplement that evens up the competitors.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
this is happening in the mental health sector too. People are learning up about bio-chemistry and curing diseases like anorexia, schizophrenia and clinical depression. The drug companies are like Microsoft, pedding rubbish that doesn't work instead of treating people.
I think the conclusions the author comes to are a bit far fetched, but their premise may be accurate. While I'm sure it's true that amateurs are making an impact and performing to "professional" standard, I think the term "professional" is used a bit loosely. There's nothing professional about the lackluster UI slapped on every distro of Linux.
Don't get me wrong, though. That gripe aside, I think what amateurs offer a professional industry is insight and thought that is outside the box. Many professionals in IT, for example, have horse-blinders on. They can't see anything but Microsoft.
But this is nothing new, folks. This has happened throughout history. Almost all great inventors and thinkers have come from a rebellious non-traditional background. There is good reason for this. Their ideas and throughts are not so strictly bound by the instruction they would have received going through normal channels. I'm not advocating we all forget our professional training, but I think we can learn from those who offer "revolutionary" ideas-- not be threatened by them.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
That's true, but you have not included enough extraneous rubbish to get moderated up.
This perhaps may be off topic (just a little), but my wife has dark cirlces around her eyes. She has always felt ugly because of them, and been tormented all her life because people think she is on drugs. In fact they are not related to drugs in any way, it's genetic. I tried to convice her that people are mature enough not to judge people that way, but that always fails in practice. It's actually quite amazing the difference in treatment she receives when wearing/not wearing makeup.
$.2
-My cat's name is mittens
Obviously I haven't bothered to read the article but I am fairly sure that whatever field you care to mention was built from the work of dedicated amateurs or professionals in one field developing others as a hobby in their spare time.
The designations "amateur" and "professional" are fairly meaningless anyway, do the amateur's ( presumably ) discussed in the article dedicate any less time to their work or are they significantly less intelligent ?
In fact I think the real distinction is purely financial, professionals are funded for the work they do which when things move beyond a stage where normal people can't afford the tools to continue working in it it is obviously going to be dominated by professionals. I suspect the real driver behind this "Amateur revolution" is simply that the tools required are either very cheap or free for use by anyone who wants to use them.
Isn't that when Bob Barker beat the snot out of Happy Gillmore? "The Price is Wrong, Bitch!"
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Who in the hell plays the Sims games?!?! Completely un-entertaining!
A professional does the job, even when they don't want to do. An amateur does it whenever they feel like it.
Being a professional doesn't mean you're any good at it (e.g. look at all the "professionals" in our fields (IT/Med/Law/Bus/etc) that have degrees, yet they're as dumb as a box-of-rocks).
Getting paid to be a professional is strictly a bonus.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
All of the above doesn't even mention the massive impact the blogosphere has had on politics and the media. Just look at Rathergate (a topic ridiculously ignored by this site's reflexively LeftDot politics--what the hell, it was even tech-related, but nope, can't mention that on ./--might help Bush!), where a bunch of "amateur" bloggers took CBS News down for the count.
That amateurs can contribute is, in large part, due to the steady price deflation of equipment, especially equipment based on semiconductors.
And this is due to massive multinational corporations spending billions on R&D and infrastructure. The amateur computer geeks would be virtually nonexistent if giants like MS, Intel, and various Asian chipmakers weren't commoditizing the industry. I don't think that I've ever seen anybody making semiconductors in their garage...
I don't respond to AC's.
I've always thought amateur porn was WAY better than the professional stuff!
And at the heart of the article, and I know this one isn't new, It's not what you know it's who you know and your drive to make things better that makes you a better employee. As for the lack of intelligence, harness your stupidity because in your stupidity brings fourth some of the most creative ideas come out.
People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Well, not all people ...
http://www.gospelcom.net/
The glorious USA will continue to allow ever more absurd and abstract patents on stuff like "licensing software per-employee" to protect our revered corporations and their godlike leaders from these "pro-ams". Remember, what's good for Microsoft is Good for America! anyone who dares suggest free-market capitalism is good
Which kind of contradicts TFA's statement:
"Linux is the product of mass participatory innovation among thousands of Pro-Am technologists. Many of them program commercial software for a living but work on Linux in their spare time because the spirit of collaborative problem solving appeals so powerfully."
How can you be an "amateur" working on Linux if you are paid to write code?
I can see how Linux STARTED as an amateur project. Linus was still in school.
So you're saying that corporate stuctures somehow ruin productivity, stifle innovation and creativity, and turn the skills you once loved into the job you dread from the first moment you wake up in the morning? It's news to me but OK, if you say so...
Keep in mind, Hip Hop and Rap are two different genres.
Say you have a large company that depends on a free database app for your core. Like, say, MySQL...
No offense, but no large company would do this. The IT director would be summarily fired. This screams "amateur".
I don't respond to AC's.
You know, there's a web site that addresses this spcific fetish...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
In fact, having a lot of spare time and having a lot of spare cash seem to be mutually exclusive.
I think if you look at the great amateurs of the past who made significant contributions were financiallly independent. People who had to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, didn't have the time or energy or wherewithall to do that kind of stuff.
With the economy the way it is, I'm in the lots of spare time category but I'm definitely hitting limits on stuff I can do simply because I've had to cut down on spending. So no new hardware with the new features I need to port my code to exploit.
As someone only recently getting into Hip Hop, I'd be interested to know what artist that was.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
First to fall away is control of the flow of ideas. That flow has been bottlenecked by the recentralization of control of mass media in the 20th century leading to a new form of theocracy.
The events following this release of theocratic control over thought occur with a great deal of interrelationship including all manner of "amateur":
Liberalism in its original form from the Reformation and Enlightenment, meant human experimentation (e.g.: "laboratory of the States") but experimentation requires experimental controls. Therefore the prime cause for concern was not that there be agreement between parties but that disagreeing parties find ways to separate from one another to form experimental groups, allowing control groups to preserve older ways. The Age of Exploration was therefore consequent to the Enlightenment.
In the present instance we can take a not too emotional issue such as cloning as a probable "heresy" over which such issues are arising. (There are other, far more motional issues such as homosexual marriage, racial separatism, pedophillia, infanticide, etc. that we can address similarly.) There are attempts in the UN to ban cloning globally under protocols similar to bans on nuclear weaponry. Like most other social experiments people are conducting or wish to conduct, the various entities are proposing that they have world-wide jurisdiction. The conflict isn't over the technologies but over the social experiments allowed or disallowed.
This is a legitimate concern as the globe becomes smaller due to transport and communications technologies. Preemptive controls will increasingly impose on all aspects of life for security's sake. Liberty will dissipate just as it has been with the increase of all forms of centralized control. Soon there will be no more experiments in social forms save those dictated by the sort of individuals attracted to the centers of power, hence the only legacy of humanity will be the destruction of the planet.
The solution is to make the globe bigger and leave earth to the true control groups.
Humanity must find ways of dispersing life to lifeless environments, there to take up residence and leave the earth to the true conservatives -- perhaps limited to hunting and gathering with stone-age technology. Anything else would continue the destruction of vital control groups, not just hunter-gatherers but entire species such as great apes, while depriving humanity of the liberty to conduct its experiments.
The real question of legitimate use of central power isn't over whether to allow this or that experiment but whether the central power is doing everything in its power to disperse life.
By this criterion there is not a single legitimate central point of power in the world, but the worst offenders of all are those nations of European diaspora who are destroying their pioneering heritage with supposed "liberal" policies that dictate universal open borders, "diversity" via EEOC regulations down to the granularity of small mom and pop businesses, by subjecting such an enormous proportion of a family's income political redistribution that all are forced to focus their energies on politics rather than pioneering. All of these things are dictating the social experiments that are politically correct for those pioneering populations and are endangering not just those populations, but life itself as technological civilization is bottled up in an increasingly dangerous pressure-cooker.
Seastead this.
I would agree with you entirely ( in fact I do agree with you entirely ) but just add that really is no difference between amateurs and professionals except that professionals are funded to do what they do whereas amateurs are not.
Like you say the true test of quality work is the dedication and motivation of the person rather than anything else.
While I wait for that day, I'm going to listen to some music.
How can this article be taken seriously with this glaringly false fact. He's been building and designing games forever, hardly an amateur.
And musicians have been operating like this for 100s if not 1000s of years. The amature "revolution" in music is hardly a new thing.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Corporations, their money, and their slaves will continue to reshape society via their direct control over multiple media outlets (solidified TV/news, radio, Internet) not the public. Grass-roots campaigns have always existed on the fringe and while their causes are noble the masses love to be sheep while thinking they aren't.
Whew! Thanks for that, I needed a good laugh this morning. We've really got to do something about those pesky corporations and their mass mind control over all us sheep...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I always thought that:-
(B)+(D)+(B)+(D) = (t) + (wiki)
And the rest is filler, as I appear to be yelling.
You see in the normal world, as you use and learn technology - you build a foundation that becomes more and more valuable and needed over time.
But we do not live in the normal world - we live in a world where there is proprietary and non proprietary technology, and for the short term there is always intense pressure to use and learn the proprietary stuff. But this stuff always makes you obsolete, and gives you nothing to build on over the long term.
The truth is that it is always in peoples best interest to know the non proprietary stuff that they can build on over the long term. Traditionally we have had college to build a non proprietary foundation to bypass the problems caused in a proprietary society - but now thanks in part to the internet - we have things like unrestricted free access to information, we have access freely to things like Linux.
The rules have changed, and this is just one of the symptoms. The barriers to bypass the proprietary problems have dropped, and the effects will likely shake the system to it's knees.
Charles Lindbergh was a mail pilot before he made the first flight ever across the atlantic (L.I. to Paris).
All the original "elite hackers" of the early information age were total amateurs.
Every "professional" was once an amateur. Our culture has come to identify a slick suit, fancy title and wad of cash with skill and ability. Being a "pro" means you have proven yourself to the mainstream, maybe that you were a better amateur than some others, maybe that you were in the right place at the right time. Years of experience are good, yes. So is imagination, fresh perspective, and untapped potential.
A point? uh... (digs furiously) uh...raincheck?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
If I hadn't already posted in this topic I would have modded that off-topic, also although I haven't bothered doing anything more than scan through it it appears to be a load of crap, I do hope you just cut and pasted it from somewhere rather than bothering to type it all.
In fact you copied it from here http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/tlic.html
You forgot to mention the blogosphere. Blogs dramatically lower the cost of entry into journalism. This has led many professionals and a bunch of arm chair quarterbacks to contribute the media cycle. In a nation that prides freedom of press, freedom of speech, and fairness, this is a good thing.
Go Gusties
No they most certainly will not. Not unless these "amateurs" get the election process changed to a reality TV style format. People just don't care enough about politics and social entrepeneurship. They want to sit at home and drug their brains with TV. That's all they want out of life. House, two SUVs, a jetski, and 2.75 kids.
Stop getting all your facts about the population from the internet, step out of your moms house and look around the big blue room (no not IBMs wiring closet). Politics is fronted by the elected officials they make the decisions we want or they do not. Organized groups can have a HUGE impact on those officials starting with the not so good example of the 'flash mobs' at the RNC. People will learn though what is and is not effective. I am on several political lists and when issues I care about are mentioned I and other like minded souls respond. I have written enough times to my congressman that when I met him at a public library luncheon he recognized my name. He told me that writing a congressman with your views is like casting more than ten votes...why because less than one in 10 people write them (and yes that is write as in on paper). Imagine if in your hometown you organized 20 people to write your congressman on issues. That would carry real power and influence.
Seriously: Pro-Ams? Is that an insult or a compliment? Reminds me of "Dot-Com"s and "Yuppie"s
And this is due to massive multinational corporations spending billions on R&D and infrastructure. The amateur computer geeks would be virtually nonexistent if giants like MS, Intel, and various Asian chipmakers weren't commoditizing the industry.
Absolutely true! Pursuit of the trillions of dollars in consumer and business equipment markets has driven the R&D and economies of scale that make a DVD player cost only $50. The world market of private sector electronic goods has supplanted the military as the driver for innovation.
I don't think that I've ever seen anybody making semiconductors in their garage...
I had a semiconductor making kit when I was a kid. Made by Bell Labs (in the 1970s?), the kit included a disk wafer of silicon, polishing grit, etchants & dopants, a small 600W ceramic/electric oven, and a sheet of asbestos fireboard (arsenic and asbestos, what fun!). The kit let one make a silicon solar cell. But you are right that modern semiconductors (at a billion dollars a fab) require serious resources.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
you're full of shit dude!
Gmail DOES work on mozilla and firefox, I use firefox all the time and use gmail with firefox!
"And so the Trekkies were executed in the mannor most befitting virgins - thrown into volcanoes" - Futurama
If you're going to do "Analogy's" shouldn't you also say "idea's"?
Now if your working with MS for MS SQL... However if you hire a Linux hacker, you have part of the team that does the actual developement on the software that you use working for you. Just a phone call away and he is probably almost personal freinds with the rest of the team and can contact other developers for you.
What a joke. Everyone who can administer RDBMSs on Linux is suddenly buddy buddy with the developers of MySQL or Postgre?
link?
Harmony has been replaced by rhythm. Personally I think if you can listen to rap/hiphop you can listen to house/techno. As instrumentally they are the same.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
I think you forget that some of the most popular porn is amateur porn. Though it certainly isn't homemade nor are the women necessarily homely.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
No offense, but no large company would do this. The IT director would be summarily fired. This screams "amateur".
Oh, so Google are amateurs? Okay.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
He was a genuine artist more interested in the realities of life than hip hop fame, which is what it boils down to for every genre.
But is this the exception or the rule? If it is the exception, then this is a common mistake trying to prove by example (you can't prove something by example, unless you exhaustively use every example and they all hold to your original hypothesis).
For every one of your example, I can probably show three examples of folks who get into it for the "benefits" of fame.
Amateurs, including me, have made galena radios for almost a hundred years. A galena detector is a semiconductor diode. Although people most often use natural crystals, I have read about people who made their galena crystals from its basic elements, lead and sulphur. And there was once a Scientific American "Amateur Scientist" column on making field effect transistors.
I have tried to get family and friends more interested in what is going on in the government but almost every single person just doesn't care. They say it's because their vote/comments don't matter so why should they do anything. When I point out that if people who believe that crap did something instead of spouting the crap things would change. They point out that no one else is going to change so why should they? and so it becomes a circular arguement. And the United States slips a little further into Lucifer's drain.
Amateur astronomers have always had a big impact, there is nothing new going on here. Many comets are found by amateurs, as (until recently, when the process was automated) were many extra-galactic supernovae. Likewise, many amateurs have devoted a great deal of time to monitoring variable stars.
In many cases, these observations are not done by professionals because the return on each *individual* observation is small, and they could not justify the time. But there is singificant synergy, since a researcher interested in (say) variable stars has access to many different light curves from each star thanks to the work of amateurs.
The technology used by amatuers has improved, with cheap CCDs and computers -- but the same technology has also made professional instruments much more effective than they were in the days of photographic plates and clockwork drives.
To my mind (as a theoretical physicist who started out as an amateur astronomer in junior high) an analagous activity is bird watching: professional ornithologists use a huge amount of use of data gathered by amateur "birders", who are often exceptionally knowledgeable about the species they look at, and who gather data from a love of observing the natural world. But this is not high tech, so Fast Company didn't see it.
So true. Just look at radio, and the laws pushed to keep us from starting our own stations with now-cheap equipment.
Same with cable companies suing grass roots campaigns that attempt to roll their own broadband.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Yeah man! Just like Microsift did to Linux! Oh wait...They haven't crushed Linux dispite having billions of dollars and a huge company of full of highly-paid professionals.
I guess it's pretty hard to compete with people who don't need any backing.
i have no idea who the author was refering to, but it made me want to listen to some KRS-One. original hip-hop.
if you ever get a chance to see him/them live, don't miss out.
Rap music wasn't promoted by "Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs" unless you mean sneakerNet. Decidedly low-tech, ghetto kids invented rap with turntables from garbage cans, because they couldn't afford any instruments, and no one in the Bronx was throwing away guitars. They couldn't even get on the radio for years, so playgrounds and cassette tapes were their medium. By the time even analog FM radio started playing them, they were already a cultural institution, which radio and video networks (like MTV and ClearChannel) have largely destroyed, transforming cool smartass party kids into glossy spokesmodels product for global consumer brands. Some "rap" is still bubbling underground, with its original spirit, riding both social and digital networks.
--
make install -not war
Definately rediculous! Your saying I loose the spelling war? The artical's principle idea is that amature hobbiests's principal is to work without professionals!
quantum leap: n. An abrupt change or step, especially in method, information, or knowledge: Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, quantum leap A dramatic advance, especially in knowledge or method, as in Establishing a central bank represents a quantum leap in this small country's development. This term originated as quantum jump in the mid-1900s in physics, where it denotes a sudden change from one energy state to another within an atom. Within a decade it was transferred to other advances, not necessarily sudden but very important ones. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. quantum leap n : a sudden large increase or advance; "this may not insure success but it will represent a quantum leap from last summer" [syn: quantum jump] Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
Oh, so Google are amateurs? Okay.
I'd be rolled in shit if Google really ran MySQL as their main database. Call me nuts, but I'd think that Google would need, or, I dunno... stored procedures, triggers, foreign keys, you know, the basics pieces of a RDBMS that MYSQL doesn't provide.
I don't respond to AC's.
Plus, if amateurs were so great the flood of high quality home-made porno would be a ton better than what Vivid puts out. Personally, I'd rather watch the oversized men fuck women with over-sized Nip/Tuck'd boobs and airbrushed looking bodies than watching a fat, hairy, man fuck some underaged looking dark-circle eyed skank on the floor of a Super8 hotel room. That's me though ;)
'kay, I'll reply to this because I'm so fond of amateur porn. I believe that there's a certain barrier to entry for real, full, media production. For decent photography, one needs at minimum a $200 digital camera (as opposed to the shitty one on a cell phone---wait, things have suddenly gotten cheaper, you can get a Powershot A75 for $160 or so) and to spend five or ten minutes setting up some lights. For the extraordinarily cheap (that's me!), those clamp lights you can get for a few bucks at the hardware store work. Yeah, the lighting is uneven, but it's better than available room light.
Still, too many amateurs don't really put the basic kind of effort required to make their pictures Not Suck. Oh, the content itself may be good, but it's frequently noisy and underexposed.
As for video, I really do think the cost is generally prohibitive. Still cameras that also capture bits of video tend to, let's face it, suck horribly. A decent miniDV cam is around $250 (though this is surprising to me; when I got mine a few years ago, it was bottom-of-the-barrel at $550). Then there's tapes, time and effort to be expended.
Capture and encoding requires a dorky level of interest in learning how to use Virtualdub (or transcode, I suppose), do deinterlacing and muxing, etc.) to even work then. Too much time and effort, I guess.
Which really does disappoint me, because despite my complaints, amateur porn really is the best porn. Whether it be one or another LJ community, or a mostly-free picture post (getting original-resolution images requires a membership), there's a lot of good stuff out there.
'Course, that's really just my opinion. Mileage may vary.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What the stories author failed to understand is that these Pro-Ams have always been around, its just that now the author is an adult and has opportunities to join adult organizations.
Take for instance Ham radio operators, one of the more interesting things to do is joining huge worldwide networks to "pass traffic" (messages) from place to place. MARS, the Military Affiliate Radio System is Amateurs used to pass personal messages from military personnel to their families back in the US. This still is used but has really fallen by the wayside with cell phones and e-mail and the like.
Starting in the 60's Ham radio operators launched a series of satellites constructed by unpaid amateurs (www.amsat.org) AMSAT-OSCAR 7, launched in 1974 still being listed as semi-operational. These amateurs have since 1961 launched a series of 50 other satellites.
Amateurs and groups of amateurs a century ago in the 1910's fostered a world wide revolution called the aeroplane. Some of their groups like the Aviator Club in France still exist.
Voulunteer organizations run by people that I guarantee look at the organization in a professional light are nothing new. Fraternal organizations like Elks or KOC or OddFellows, or any of a thousand others (http://www.exonumia.com/art/society.htm) all have declining and aging memberships. This is not because people are not doing the same kind of joining or voulunteering, Its just that instead of putting on the goofy hat and going to the lodge on friday night, everyone is putting on the goofy hat and joing the rest of their StarCraft clan on-line on friday night.
Even the authors own point that some of these Pro-Ams are astronomers is foolish. Perhaps 99 percent of all astronomers EVER have been amateurs, and many comets have been discovered over the past 100 years by amateurs or groups of amateurs. Are these amateurs working any less professionally than somone being paid for the work?
There are millions of small groups of unpaid amateurs producing research and journals and inventions and discoveries. To think that there is anything unique or new about this is just plan wrong. The author of the article has made the fatal error that many young people make of believing that they have discovered some truism of the human condition that their and only their generation has come up with, and that anything more than 20 years old is worthless. Perhaps the author should remember how his own industry came to be and remember that no one got paid to run the Homebrew Computer Club.
Reality is all that stuff that doesn't care if you believe in it or not.--Solomon Short
You know, discreet.asstr.org is designed to be safe-for-work. Neat, eh?
But, eh, I don't think plots should be terribly necessary. I mean, why would we watch real people just to see them act? I'd rather toss them all in a comfy, well-lit space, say "Fuck!" and tape it.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You mean the armature revolution? We had that the beginning of last century; electrical generation and suchlike. No? Oh? Oh... you meant amateur!
We need better ways to protect the small innovators from the many tricks large corporations can use to threaten, intimidate, bankrupt, and harass them-- regardless of who is actually in the right.
What we need are actual prosecutions, and sentences with real teeth in them, for knowingly filing false cases, and barratry in all its forms. It's time for lawyers to go to jail when they knowingly misuse the law!
And we can start by making an example out of the RIAA!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The only difference between pros and amateurs is the amount of time they spend on something and the price of their tools. Telescopes are becoming commodities just like computers. The internet allows people to collaborate and check out the same object and keep up to date on the latest developments.
It doesn't matter much if your being paid, it's how much time and work you put into what your doing and how much it costs to have the proper tools to help you out.
Astronomy and Programming now have very low barriers to entry and are easy to collaborate. It just broadeds the base of those fields. To get the the top you still need super computers or things like the Keck Observatory that are very hard to come by - for now.
I've been reading /. on a daily basis for about 6 months now, and I understand this site's love for linux stories, but does any story that uses the word linux is a good light deserve story status? No. This was quite possibly the worst thought out and written story I've seen on this site.
Good link, but small correction needed...
Christians _are_ sheep, just God's sheep.
I shall continue to cling to the physics related definition.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
About astronomy...
I am sorry but with a dobson, you can take picture of the moon and a few planets, holding your digital camera, but that's all... to take pictures of DSO (deep space object), you need a very stable equatorial mount and automatic tracking motors, to allow e.g. 10 minutes CCD exposure. (Or a heavy fork mount and a field "de-rotationner")
But it's true that now this is open to a lot of people, a > 10" SCT and a good CCD will cost more than 10000$, but hardcore amateurs can afford that, and share information and pictures on the net.
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I think most libertarian minded people would agree that artificial barriers to entry into segments in society are a BadThing (eg like the guilds of old). The idea that amateurs would be excluded from science, music, medicine, or any field just because they don't belong to a group goes against the grain of modern free society. So I agree with the author in spirit.
That said, however, I disagree with the author on most points because the article assumes that such artificial barriers exist across most of society. IMHO, for the most part, they do not. In the case of science and medicine -- these are *very* hard and critical professions -- the barriers to entering these professions are not artificial; they are nessecary. I for one don't want a doctor-on-the-weekends treatmenting me. Likewise, I don't think most people can train themselves to research and develope nano-technology. I'm not saying that most people can't go into such fields if they choose, it just requires a life-long commitment. Nor am I implying that one needs to pay huge $$$ to pursue such a career -- many of the state funded universities offer the same opportunies as the ivy leage schools.
\forall code \in C, \frac{\Delta readability(code)}{\Delta t} < 0
These are people who are unemployed but mentally active and seeking work. Were jobs available, they'd be off on more productive tasks.
Hmph.
This rise in amateur participation has been cycling in and out for decades. When a new technology is released to the world it is the profesionals of another profession that are the first to see applications for it that were never intended. But the amateur cycle exists in the amount of time a person has to put towards in. We are getting to a point in the american culture where life is starting to slow down and people are getting board and start tinkering.
The author is right over the next couple of decades we will get inventions from professional that will allow the amatuers free time to work on there idea's.
Remember Tomas Edison was a young amateur when he created the electronic vote counting machine, cash register and the improved typewriter. Then he went on to become a professional and created more than 1000 other inventions and innovations.
I say let the cycle start again because the world can only benefit from it.
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
You wrote:
Why would you want the weak lions to procreate?
Um. maybe because I AM THE WEAKER LION??! How in the name of the sweet two-fisted Jesus did the rich folks/corporation convince so many people to adopt these SUICIDAL political viewpoints? Or is it just your pride, your vanity? Will you hold on to the bitter end believing that your legendary (in your own mind) intellect will set you above all your competitors? I bet you have heard of game theory. But I bet you do not practice it in your politics....
That would pass on the weaker genes and lower the overall quality of the species? You do realize that were it not for that very process you disdain (i.e. Darwinian evolution), humans might never have appeared or any other form of intelligent species?
Dude/Dudette, surely, SURELY, you can see from my post above that I am a semi-serious student of evolutionary psychology and sociology. I am KEENLY aware of natural selection and its role on Earth. But that does not mean that I want to be held in its cruel grasp. Surely that is suicidal MADNESS!
I refuse to live as an animal. Animal life is for animals. The rich and the corporations want Americans to live by the rules of the animals. I say FUCK THAT!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Like RC Pro-Am?
I have no clue about Techno, having not really listened to it, but Rap has abandoned almost every element of music except rhythm, harmony being just one element (which was never universal).
Rhythm has been there a long time. Our language lost many distinctions in vowel length (at least in America). Naturally, lyrics became more stress-based, as the old vowel-length conventions were destroyed by the language. It's just a mutation in rhythm; it's a stress and beat based rhythm now. It doesn't constitute a reason to abandon all the other attributes of music to emphasise one little thing.
Here's an example of rhythm from the opening lines of the Iliad. It was an oral song recorded in the 8th century BC that had been passed down for about half a millenneum. l means a long vowel, s a short vowel, and | a foot separater. A new line equals the end of a verse.
lss | lss | ll | lss | lss | lslss | ll | lss | ll | lss | ls
And so on. Each line is composed of six feet, with only two options available for the first five feet of the verse (lss or ll) and two available for the last foot (ll or ls). This quite clearly has rhythm, even though it's not based on a beat or word stress, and it's also between 2700 and 3300 years old. There's also no question that it was performed with instruments, as bards from the era are depicted as carrying a five-stringed harp.
If we start something new, we can't just declare it something. If it doesn't have the required attributes, we shouldn't classify it as something that has those attributes. If it doesn't walk like a duck, quack like a duck, or swim like a duck, then it isn't a duck. It doesn't matter how much we like it, we shouldn't call it what it isn't.
The article says something similar to what I've been saying in lectures for 30 years, including panels at cons. At first, I was predicting the social effects of computer networking outside the establishment (having worked in the early 1970s with Ted Nelson who invented hypertext etecetera). Soon, I was explaining what was really going on, unnoticed by mainstream academe and press. Now, I'm telling people something that they consider so obvious that I'm a fool for wasting their time to tell them what they know. The next step is everyone saying that they thought of this first. Of course, I'm somewhat doing the latter.
Amateur Revolution
[Fast Company]
From: Issue 87 | October 2004, Page 31
By: Charles Leadbeater
"From astronomy to computing, networks of amateurs are displacing the pros and spawning some of the greatest innovations."
"Rap inflects global popular culture from music to fashion. Linux poses a real threat to Microsoft. The Sims is among the most popular computer games ever."
"These far-flung developments have all been driven by Pro-Ams -- committed, networked amateurs working to professional standards. Pro-Am workers, their networks and movements, will help reshape society in the next two decades."
"The 20th century was marked by the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organizations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it. Now that historic shift seems to be reversing. Even as large corporations extend their reach, we're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organization."
-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post
http://magicdragon.com
Over 15,000,000 hits per year
Top 5 for "science fiction" on Google and Yahoo
Why is it that analysts always try to coin catch-phrases? The term "Pro-Am" floats through the essay like a damn trademark. It just makes the otherwise o.k. analysis more jargony than necessary. Fast Company should know better than allowing their sources to make up words.
I suspect that analysts coin terms because if one catches on then they can claim to be the owners of that trend. It's silly. A few years back Forrester Research (I think) kept releasing reports about the coming trend of "organic computing." Except no one else in the biz actually used that term. It just looked clueless.
joab
What he said still works, because in physics it means "discrete" (not just "small"). So when he says "a quantum leap in technology," he's talking about a breakthrough or revolutionary advance as opposed to a continuous, evolutionary advance.
I agree with most of what you say, but this is not quite true. I live in Houston and there are many, many small time labels and artists. There are enough that we can do a show featuring about 20 labels a year.
They aren't kids with tape recorders, they have good equipment, but LOTS of small time amateur rappers can make albums in these studios for an affordable price. Once in a while a small timer gains local fame and sometimes gets picked up by a major label where they often get swallowed into the same momey machine as most music, but the vast majority stay ammateurs.
I think the point is that if you have a small amount of money anyone can get a record produced and there are lots of amateurs who do this.
If you're comparing the state of rap music to that of rock in respective decades, then I can extrapolate the future of rap is bleak at best. I can hardly wait for rap's "Grunge Period". Let the rolling of eyes commence... If there was any justice Kurt Cobain would have killed himself BEFORE getting his record deal.
Yes, do let's label all creative types who want to remain sovereign but choose to work in a co-linear fashion with others of like mind! Now that we have 'Pro-Ams', we can get down to the silly business of setting up camps and shouting wars.
I mean, how will I know where to throw my rocks if the target remains undefined?
'Pro-Ams'??
Ugh. If I'm going to join an army, it had better come up with something better than, 'Pro-Am'.
How about, "Fuck off. My name is _____ and my specialty is _____ and I want to help make cool stuff without some evil elitists' yoke around my neck."? If you call me a 'Pro-Am' it means you're probably a crappy buzz-word journalist or some keener executive at AssCorp who Just Doesn't Get It or is Quaking In His/Her Loafers.
-FL
As the percentage of the population that votes increases the less my informed vote actually counts. I'm so sick of hearing people say get out and vote, like the results will be automatically better just by having more voters casting ballets. 600 million uninformed monkeys can go to the polls but I'd argue that your much better off having only the population that cares enough to be informed about the issues making the decisions.
To me making an uninformed vote is infinately worse than not voting at all.
Not saying that modern popular music is something really new. Just that it developed more complex rhythms instead of harmonies. The emphasis has shifted. Personally I think that the lyrics of rap/hiphop and techno/house are the harmony of the music. E.g. what the singers are saying is not that important but their tone/feeling.
-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
The word amateur has come to mean a person who is not as skillful as a professional. The root derivation is the latin "amator" or lover. The true meaning is someone who does something for love, not money. I can't think of a higher honor to pay to someone than to say that they do something well because they love it, not because they're getting paid to do it.
"Well Ranger Brad, I'm a scientist. I don't believe in anything." - Dr. Roger Fleming
Amateur Radio Operators have been historically significant in "advancement of the radio art" (quoted from the FCC reason for the creation of the service).
Let's also remember that Apple Computer was started in a garage!
Disco didn't start in the late 70's.
It went mainstream (and crap) in the late 70's.
No the Bee Gee's aren't disco...
Disco was black gay urban music - just like house.
Rap doesn't have it's roots in the early 80's.
Kool Herc was playing block parties in the 70's.
and some would say rap started earlier - "Jive talking" etc etc....
Acid House saves Souls
Well, perhaps democratization is not the precise word. But the *means* of doing professional level work is more widespread than ever before.
In general (despite a recent local trend away from these achievements), people are more educated, people have more leisure time, and people have the means to acquire higher-quality tools and equipment. This is mostly a result of technology becoming ubiquitous and cheap.
Consider making movies: before the late 70s, a home movie maker could affordably use Super-8 format. The cameras were moderately expensive and had limited functionality. Professionals were shooting 35mm or 70mm on cameras that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Today, even some of the studios shoot on high-end video, and the quality difference between the high-end and the consumer low-end is not huge (since the "ama-pros" don't necessarily distribute on film stock, I'm willing to call video and film equivalent, even knowing the differences). But I haven't even mentioned the most important part: the editing. Nonlinear editing? Even ten years ago, that started around $20k. Today, it comes with any iMac.
Similarly, anyone can get an acceptable recording studio in their house for under $2k.
People can afford to own power tools that my father's generation could only dream about.
I could go on, but I think the point is made. Of course there are amateurs doing pro-level work. There always have been! But now the means are readily available to open up the opportunities to far more people; it should be no surprise that more people are taking those opportunities. That these same people are having ideas that hadn't been thought of by the "Pros" seems almost self-evident. The more minds on a subject, the more ideas.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
This is one area where the amateur thing is for real. In the pre-digital photography era since you couldn't go to a normal commercial developer with your porn, if you wanted decent camera shots, ie not just polaroids, you'd either need to deal with a sleazy specialist developer only available in certain areas or finance your own dark room. That put limits on what amateurs could do.
My how things have changed. Now pretty much anbody can crank out decent amateur porn. Of course most still fail terribly on the lighting, but sometimes it's not too bad and there's fucking mounds of it on the newsgroups.
According to my Oxford dictionary, the original meaning of amateur was "One who loves or is fond of" - from the French amare (to love). I like this definition - I think that an intrinsic love for the subject is what distinguishes an amateur from a professional. An amateur could be paid, but would keep working even if they are not.
A similar word, usually used in a derogative way is dilettante - "A lover of the fine arts; originally one who cultivates them for the love of them rather than professionally, and so = amateur as opposed to professional ... later applied ... to one who interests himself in an art or science merely as a pastime and without serious aim or study." (OED)
It is based on the French word dilettare - to delight.
Compare this with the word Professional which my OED tells me is based on the word Profession - "The declaration, promise or vow made by one entering a religious order; hence the action of entering such an order; the fact of being professed in a religious order."
So we have two pictures - the professional who has made a serious, solid, institutional commitment; and the amateur/dilettante who is in it purely for the love and delight. It is not surpising that the professionals look down on the amateurs and mistrust their pleasure. It is also not surprising that the history of science and technology is full of breakthroughs made by amateurs.
I agree with the premise of the article - as we become richer and live longer lives more and more of us are able to spend time indulging our love and delight and make significant contributions as amateurs.
I'm sorry for misunderstanding you to be claiming that the elements were something new.
Lyrics, what we say, isn't harmony. Harmony is the melding of two notes or sounds to produce a new sound from them. When two people sing, each on different notes, so that the resulting sound is different from the first sounds, then we have harmony. The same can be done with instruments and things like that. It cannot be done by speaking, rhythm, or the like. It requires variation in pitch and two separate sounds or pitches to interact, and lyrics cannot do that.
Granted, not all music has harmony (e.g., acapella), but my claim is that rap has abandoned almost all the other tenets of music besides rhythm, and this disqualifies it from being music. There is no melody, pitch is limited to the way we speak, and so on. It isn't music. It is freeform poetry being dramatically performed.
Also, if what people say isn't as important as their tone or feeling, then poetry still fits the classification. That's exactly what poetry is supposed to do: the words are supposed to take a person and make them feel what the poet feels and something beyond that. This is exactly why, up until relatively recently, poetry recitals were about as popular as musical performances; they could do the same thing.
As an aside, you should try and sing any classical piece with lyrics like Handel's The Messiah (with others, of course, because it requires it). Not only do they have a harmony of sounds, but also of rhythems. One person is singing with a long, drawn out rhythem, while another person may be singing in a very fast, staccato pattern by comparison, and there may be still others doing different rhythms. In the end, there's something very complex rhythmatically. In truth, popular music simplifies the rhythm in comparison to these.
You're probably right, if only because eventually rap artists will run out of other music to sample.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
So Evelyn Glennie isn't a musician because she plays percussion? Or Mick Fleetwood? Or Charlie Watts? I don't think so, somehow...
Grab.
For the last 1000 years it has been independant people making discoveries. In the scheme of things the only new thing is the fact that we have large corporations who do more innovation now.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
You are confusing socialism with state socialism. There is nothing inheritly liberal or authoritive about socialism or capitalism (theoreticly, or course).
Capitalism is the opposite of socialism. Liberarism is the opposite of fascism.
Here's a link to clear things up. Left = socialism, right = capitalism.
The greatest detective ever, Sherlock Holmes, was an amateur...
I tend to agree with the many posted comments which judge the Fast Company article a bit overblown. There is enough to be gained even from the failures of the amateurs and nobody dies if their collaborations are stiffled by the interference of for-profit operations. ONE good effect of all the open source ferment has been to teach a lesson to the biotech industry. We are all hurt by the huge delays that patent litigation introduces into the process of biotech drug and therapy commercialization. The day before the Fast Company article and with a more fact-based report, the current issue of Nature had an article on "Open Source Biology about how biotechnologists who are willing to share their tool discoveries partly for the synergistic benefit that will have on the collective advancement of research and largely at frustration over the mire of patent litigation that gums up biotech research programs. [NPG charges for access to their content] The effort is spearheaded by Biological Inovation for Open Society and with the support of of the World Intellectual Property Organization are ushering in a new paradigm for science research.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
No offense, but to do so would be silly, because the word quantum had a meaning before physics. There was a new kind of physics that emphasized the discreet nature of things that appeared to be continuous, so they used a word, quantum, that expressed that meaning when they named this new thing.
Put identity in the browser.
The advantage that amateurs have is that they don't have managers in their face 8 hours a day telling them what to do; they don't need to brown nose or participate in other corporate-specific games; they are free to take more experiemental risks since there is no capital wasted on marketing, advertising, stock options, etc; amateurs are free to focus their time on interesting projects, not just what the focus group says they will pay for.
In the end, the talent the professional has isn't what pays the bills--it's simply his willingness to practice his craft in a corporate environment that adds value.
All the above can use, and have used, their percussions with other things and thus participate in a musical piece with more than just rhythm, so yes they are musicians, and very skilled ones. However, for a solo percussion piece, no I won't grant that.
They're bigger than me, this is true, but music was around before their great grandparents were ever a thought. It'll be around when they, you, and me have long been forgotten. I'm not one to say "Hey, that sounds real nice. I know it only has rhythm and that traditionally isn't music anywhere, but hey, I'm going to call it music anyway."
You can call it that, but it's still redefining the concept and denigrates it. Our society's willingness to do this is testified by the fact that we can have a dramatic poetry reading be called music. It takes a great amount of skill to do either one of those, but skill alone isn't the qualifier for music. Likewise, it has rhythm and is pleasing to the ear, but that alone doesn't qualify as music. If I read a simply recital of a poem, it has rhythm and is pleasing to the ear, but it isn't music. That requires skill and rhythm, and it is pleasing to the ear. As such, the same counter-argument it makes against rap applies to solo percussion.
Poetry doesn't constitute music (as in rap), but it can be a part of music if it's incorporated, and in either case, it's very pleasing to hear, and it takes a load of skill to write well. Percussion, likewise, is pleasing to hear, and it takes skill, but it is made music only by incorporation into something else. I listen to both as solo, but I'll call neither music alone.
Here's what's really going to happen.
In the technical fields:
The "Pro-Am"'s will be former scientists and engineers who are now scraping by in crappy low-tech jobs after their companies outsourced the Pros to India and China, or after their associated manufacturing plant closed.
In reality, professional scientists who are paid for their work, and have been continuously employed as scientists since graduate school contribute to 99.9% of all actually useful and novel scientific progress.
And this is NOT due to some conspiracy theories or the "Establishment Keeping Innovative Thinkers Down" or any such BS. It's because pros and those who work with pros are the ones who know what they're talking about. I've occasionally reviewed research papers submitted to journals by apparent Pro-Am's (judging from affiliation or lack thereof). Almost always they're crap, often unaware of difficulties or the status of the field. The people who write them are often clearly bright, but that's only a first step.
A few amateur astronomers who are expert comet or asteroid hunters (even at professional quality levels) is insignificant in value next to, say, discovering evidence for life on Titan or figuring out how Dark Energy works.
The era of the Gentleman Scientist is fortunately over. Since, the days of the Wright Brothers (about when things really changed), the era of the corporation and state supported scientists has come, and the total societal value derived from scientific progress has exploded. (in more ways then one, true).
While the word amateur is indeed of French origin, the verb meaning "to love" is aimer. Both come from the Latin amare, but that does not make amare a French word.
And concerning delittare: That is neither French nor Latin but Italian, the Latin root is delectare. But, indeed, delittante stems from the present participle of delittare.
While this is entirely acceptable for porn (lets face it, quality expectations aren't at the top of your list), the process of getting a video that someone would want to watch while fully clothed is signifigantly more difficult.
This weekend I will be participating in my second 48 hour film making challenge this year. While we are working under time constraints, it still gives a good idea of how hard it is to turn out something. To get an decent product you need a 3 chip DV cam, external mic and mixer, color balanced lighting, and at least 5 editing hours for every filming hour. And even having all that doesn't insure that it looks any better than a Mexican soap opera.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Thank you for a great laugh. :)
I'm looking to get rich. I've got steps #2 (????) and #3 (PROFIT!) planned out, but am having trouble coming up with #1.
> Ant writes "Fast Company's article mentions
> that networks of amateurs are displacing the
> pros and spawning some of the greatest
> innovations from from astronomy to computing.
>...
> These far-flung developments have all been
> driven by Pro-Ams -- committed, networked
> amateurs working to professional standards. Pro-
> Am workers, their networks and movements, will
> help reshape society in the next two decades."
The article continues:
"Nowhere has this amature influence been more felt than with Internet pornography.
In the late 1970's, pornography entered a dead zone with the ending of the hairy bush. For the next twenty years nothing much happened.
Then, the late 1990's witnessed the coming of vigorous Internet lesbian amateur pornography, energetic, rich, and slobbering intimacy and deep lengual probing of all orifices.
Specialty areas arose, such as Japanese lesbian tongue sucking where full-lipped Asians..."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is exactly what microsoft wants to stop. In the software business, at least.
That is why it is focusing on becoming a monopoly by gaining antitrust immunity and patenting everything that crosses it's path.
This is why it is collaborating with other companies and forming a cartel of sorts with others "damaged" by competition from Linux and other such upstarts.
History has shown that the vast majority of innovation comes from the work of "amateurs".
When it is left to corporations to innovate, innovation usually becomes mired in corporate bureaucracy or is killed off as "unprofitable".
They are very serious and determined in this. And they hope no one will notice.
That said, the cheaper and improved communication enabled by recent technological developments, notably the Internet, has allowed talented amateurs to exchange ideas and cross motivate each other without physically have to be in the same place.
In most periods of intense innovation, the innovation itself takes place in so-called clusters, where there is a critical mass of the talented and passionate individuals driving the creation and development of new technology.
This pattern has existed for hundreds of years. Consider the following (incomplete list):
In each of these periods, outsiders managed to start entire industries, often becoming household names and rich in the process. The barriers to entry were initially low and, as time went by, the rich and powerful would naturally attempt to raise them to preserve their comfortable status quo. Generally, this led to a period of stagnation and then another bout of innovation would occur, often in different place and involving different technology.
What's different is that now, with the Internet, being in the same places physically isn't a necessary condition for the formation of a cluster.
In observing the development of personal computers and the introduction to electronic communications that led to the (widespread) Internet you might want to consider the steps that led to where we are now. They are not listed in any particular order, but rather to show that we have had stages of evolution prior to today's Internet that enabled Pro-Ams:
Ham radio
Bulletin Board Systems
Usenet news groups
Desktop publishing
Wide spread availability of e-mail
Browsers and static web pages
Blogs
Each of these steps allow communication to occur and in its way helped the like-minded talented amateurs find their 'cluster'.
Like the song says: It's all just history repeating ..just with a new twist.
P.S. I'd also like to point out the use of rap music to bolster the argument is false. As pointed out in some of the other comments, Big Business has controlled popular music since before the 80's and has largely stifled or co-opted all innovation since then. Not by choice, rather through greed and by attempting to reduce risk. There is some Pro-Am innovation in music, but because of Big Business' control of the existing distribution channels, it has yet to reach any mainstream audience. Perhaps the Internet will change this.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
As corporations shift from development to symbolic representation of other work, more developers find they're required to hand over their work to 20 layers of management much earlier in the development cycle. Not only are they discovering they can achieve more without the 20 layers of management but most of them want to do more substantial work than what they're allowed in a symbolic corporation.
So which of those was the amateur and which the pro?
The words "Amateur" and "Revolution" bring another large industry to mind...
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Hmmm... cyclotron...electrons moving in a vacuum?
... oh, like putting strong magnets NEXT TO THE TV SCREEN AND WATCHING IT CHANGE WHATS ON THE TV SCREEN?!!
Oh, like in a TV tube?!
Electrons hit something cause a reaction that is noticed by the experimentor...Oh like the TV SCREEN?!
Experiment with the set up
That was FOR FREE. Put some money into it and you can get as arbitrarily close to a professional cyclotron as you like.
Saying the words "rap" or "hip-hop" in the same sentence as the words "genuine artist" is about as nonsensical as connecting the words "cold" and "hell".
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Porn has a plot? The things I learn on the internet!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Disco was not the only music happening in the seventies -- far from it! The so-called "alternative" music of the eighties (which was then called "college rock" and "new wave") grew out of the punk rock movement, which was happening in the seventies. There was also a lively progressive rock scene, and funk emerged in the seventies as well -- which is quite different from, and far superior to, disco.
Elvis Costello, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Bruce Springsteen, Parliament, Stevie Wonder, War, the B-52's, Nick Lowe, and many many more -- all artists who started their careers in the seventies.
The seventies rule!
"I've always thought amateur porn was WAY better than the professional stuff!"
,Alexandria Quinn ,Alexandria Silk ,Alexia Riley ,Alisha Klass ,Allura Eden ,Allysin Chains ,Alycyn Sterling ,Amber Lynn ,Amber Michaels ,Angel Long ,Angelica Sinn ,Anita Blonde ,Anita Cannibal and Anita Dark (etc.) better than watching your sister.
I like watching Adriana Sage, Alana Evans, Alexa Rae, Alexandria Nice
More importantly the corporations find this unsettling and they have the backing to make it financially impossible for the "amateurs" to compete.
Uh yeah, they come down on them so hard they won't be able to... give their products away? These people do this stuff to challenge themselves and have fun and it's only because they sometimes do such a good job that they get paid anything. Jeez, you're such a defeatist. No wonder you people don't get anything done, you just whine about stuff.
Shut up about corporations being so powerful. No death squad is going to come after you. You aren't going to be sent off to a gulag. Shut up and do something about it if it's so bad. Boo-hoo- people don't listen to your goofy-ass views so they must be all sheep. Boo-hoo- someone might send a lawyer at you so they're no point in even trying. Wah wah.
People do care about politics and social entrepreneurship, the problem is too many people just complain and act helpless and cynical instead of doing something. Ever wonder if maybe sheep are secretly filled with feelings of resentment and outrage at the way they are treated. We'd never know it, of course, because they'd still act just like SHEEP. See a parallel?
Capitalism existed long before huge megacorporations ever existed, and it will exist long after huge megacorporations have died off.
The guy who runs a corner grocery store, or who owns his own 1-man roofing bussiness is just as much a "capitalist" as the guy who wears a suit and tie to his fortune 500 job.
No... scratch that.. the guy who owns a corner grocery store is MORE of a capitalist than some MBA drone who just pushes pieces of paper around to manipulate other people's money.
Capitalism is about using wealth and hard work to create more wealth.
Small bussiness owners actually MAKE new things and create stuff... while nowadays the megacorporations seem to just be into draining the wealth from pension and investment funds into the offshore bank accounts of a select few.
Seriously, the legions of dedicated programmers who cooperated to create Linux are a lot more "capitalist" than the folks at Redmond who think that innovation is something that you can buy or steal.
how is an EA-paid for and published game like the sims an 'amateur' game in any way?
the sim2 reportedly cost well upwards of $50 million dollars to develop - hardly an 'amateur' budget in the game industry, or any industry...
Gekido's Lair
One of the happy by-products of free information for all.
Where you don't have to be wealthy to gather knowledge, and where "actual knowledge" >= "lots of fancy paper on the wall".
This is a nice prospect; you're no longer as enthousiast sitting on an personal island, doing parallell thinking with others you're not aware about, but being able to do threaded efforts.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
...somebody will be trying to turn it into soulless commercial pap.
...somebody will be faking it, to con money out of fools.
...somebody will think they're the shiznit, despite being total crap by any objective measure.
...but none of the above means a damn, to the few guys who are quietly doing it and doing it well.
The album I recommend to people new to hip hop who wanna avoid gangsterism and g-funk and all that's come after: The Low-End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest.
(dunno if the link will work; if not, head to the All-Music Guide and look it up.
I feel sorry for you.
Art, like beauty, is in they eye of the beholder. What makes an artist genuine? I don't care for alot of rap/hip-hop but the same is true for country, rock, pop, techno, etc... The same is true for any artistic medium. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it isn't genuine art.
Now I am all bent out of shape, time to throw on some DJ Krush and chill out for a bit....
The use of money as a social control mechanism is showing some real limitations. Society has created an entire caste of sociopaths that have enormous power.
I would argue that these events aren't as isolated as you might imagine. It all boils down to effective methods of communication becoming affordable to a large number of people. A few decades ago, you needed thousands of dollars of studio equipment and expensive expertise to produce a quality audio recording (or film for that matter.) These days, the necessary expenses are much cheaper. You still need the expertise but thanks to global communication mediums such as the internet, this is readily available. Believe it or not, amatuers doproduce content. Sure, some of it is-well, amateur-but there are numerous examples of quality work. I would like to see a common method to "moderate" the wide variety of informational content out there. As technology marches exponentially forward, I imagine that point is not too far off. How you got moderated +5 insightful for a short line punctuated with a "geeze" is beyond me.
harmonious design
Until the middle of the last century, brilliant ameteurs had always made a critical contribution to science and technology. In fact, Before the middle of the 19th century, nearly all scientific discovery was made by men whose primary "job" was outside of science.
It was only when the nature of scientific discovery, exceeded the grasp of most common men (requiring may years of esoteric study or incredibly expensive aparatus), that professional scientists forced the ameteurs to virtually disappear.
The advent of cheap manufacture, cheap and plentiful advanced digital devices, and powerful information processing on a desk top, made it possible for curious ameteur to once again participate on dozens of levels of science, that were closed to public access only a decade ago.
I'm not certain whether home brewed nanotech, might be a blessing or a curse, but these are indeed interesting times.
Genda
Sorry for taking so long. The group is called Freestyle Fellowship.