14 JUN 2013 by ideonexus

 Celebrity Economy

This century's last great trend was noted by acute observers in 1996, yet most people failed to appreciate it. While business gurus were proclaiming the new dominance of creativity and innovation over mere production, the growing ease with which information was transmitted and reproduced made it harder for creators to profit from their creations. Nowadays, if you develop a marvelous piece of software, everyone will have downloaded a free copy from the Net the next day. If you record a magnifi...
Folksonomies: art information economy
Folksonomies: art information economy
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Endless channels of media allow for more celebrities, but to smaller audiences. In order to make money from media, celebrities must sell more than their works. Their works must serve as advertisements for something else, like paid performances or lectures.

01 JAN 2010 by ideonexus

 Obama Describes the World Wide Web

The image was mesmerizing, more organic than mechanical, as if I were glimpsing the early stages of some accelerating evolutionary process, in which all the boundaries between men--nationality, race, religion, wealth--were rendered invisible and irrelevant, so that the physicist in Cambridge, the bond trader in Tokyo, the student in a remote Indian village, and the manager of a Mexico City department store were drawn into a single constant, thrumming conversation, time and space giving way to...
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A beautiful, insightful description of a monitor showing World Wide Web traffic patterns.