Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Creative Works And Human Nature

Author:Patrick Connors
Posted:8/25/2000; 9:40:11 PM
Topic:Creative Works And Human Nature
Msg #:20300
Prev/Next:20299 / 20301

I am, by trade, a programmer. I've written games, designed databases, ported software, and installed handheld computers in the midst of ice storms.

But I'm also a musician, songwriter, and artist. And as such I've spent the last couple of years looking for a way in which I can make art and have money appear in my bank account. The current systems all depend on a distribution system that is beginning to fade away, albeit far too slowly for we the technological elite. That distribution system, of course, depends on selling pieces of plastic (cd's, tapes) which are easy (though expensive and cumbersome) to count and control. Scarcity economics.

We're moving - slowly, painfully - towards the ideal: a system under which artists can do what they love - create (whatever: music, poetry, databases, paintings) - have the products of their labor distributed relatively easily (for the artist is as often as not a horribly bad businessman), and be paid for their efforts according to... Well, what? A complex formula, here - their time, materials used, popularity of the work, probably some other items. But they'd get paid. If the artist wants to give something away, so be it.

The point here is to improve on the current system, in which the financial gamble is too great and the real potential rewards are either too large or too small.

There is a debate going on elsewhere in this discussion group about "what is open-source?". That debate was open to programmers only, which made sense. But the questions I want answered - the problems I want to solve - are much bigger than the programming community.

Here's the problem:

Putting those four facts together gives us today's world, in which:

Bypassing that distribution system is getting easier all the time, despite that system's struggles to stay alive. So let's jump forward in time, to a point where the distribution system as we know it today is nearly gone. (It'll never completely die, but it will change). We're all connected, music and software flow freely over these connections. You with me so far?

Now: with what we know about human nature, the music and software will flow, but the money almost won't. Because people want something for nothing. I'm a person and deep in my little animal soul I want something for nothing. The cost of music and software recordings will plummet. The notion of paying for art for any purpose other than convenience will all but vanish.

So how does the creative person keep on being creative in today's world?

As a creative person, here's what I do, as well as others' solutions:

These work for me and others. But I want to get to that other system where I'm just paid fairly. The technological hurdles exist and will be solved, but I want to hear about the social issues in this topic: What's really fair, and how do you change the hearts and minds of a billion people? And how do you make it painless for those billion people to support creative folks?




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