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William Gibson on The Age of The Remix

Posted by Zonk on from the re-re-mixing dept.

wordisms writes "William Gibson of Neuromancer fame gives his thoughts on remix and innovation in the digital age, in a short essay at Wired Magazine entitled God's Little Toys. From the article: 'Our culture no longer bothers to use words like appropriation or borrowing to describe those very activities. Today's audience isn't listening at all - it's participating. Indeed, audience is as antique a term as record, the one archaically passive, the other archaically physical. The record, not the remix, is the anomaly today. The remix is the very nature of the digital.'"

6 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great, until... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm not so sure of that. He wrote an electronic poem that was setup to only be read once. It was sorta an experiment. Of course, it was cracked and the text was distributed. He didn't complain.

  2. Re:Great, until... by cortana · · Score: 2, Informative

    Agrippa.

  3. Intertextuality by double_h · · Score: 2, Informative
    Critical theory and semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) has described the idea of Intertextuality, which is very much in the spirit of what Gibson is discussing here -- there are countless ways in which a text (or song, or other body of work) can connect with other texts. A jazz musician briefly "quotes" a couple of bars of a well-known melody in the midst of a solo as a sort of musical wink. A rapper throws in a line that (to the knowing ear) is an obvious Biggie or Nas reference. William Blake creates vast poetic landscapes with references to the Old Testament sprinkled in. Intertextuality.

    "This story is not a song, but a record." -- Lee "Scratch" Perry

  4. Re:sometimes ripoff, sometimes not by MP3Chuck · · Score: 2, Informative

    "don't remember who, don't remember the name of the song"

    The Crystal Method - Magic Carpet Ride (Remix)

    Don't know what album it's off of, though.

    --
    Who doesn't like free music?
  5. Re:sometimes ripoff, sometimes not by lucas_picador · · Score: 2, Informative
    and probably more difficult to clearly state theft of said original work.

    Theft is the act of depriving someone else of their property. Copyright infringement is speech that intrudes on the monopoly granted by the federal government on certain expressions.

    No matter how many times this distinction is made, the *AA crowd seems to be able to sucker people into believing they're the same thing. Amazing.

    If you're intent on analogizing copyright infringement to a property crime (although copyright is only a pseudo-property right), "trespass" (get off my land!) or "trespass to chattels" (you borrowed my sweater without asking!) are much closer analogies than "theft".

    This also makes for more interesting discussions about copyright and property rights when one considers that all copyrighted material draws from the public domain, just as all real property in e.g. North America was originally stolen from the native inhabitants.

  6. Re:God's Little Toys by glen604 · · Score: 4, Informative

    God's little toy was a floating camera in one of his books, that a character used to take footage of her life, and the life of people around her..
    kind of fitting reference- remixing the video of your life, i guess.