The Fulfillment Of My Dreams

[koganbot]

Tom posted this on his Blue Lines tumblr (the main motive being to make a funny about rolling joints, I think):

The Trade-Off

Things People Did With Albums In 1989

Listen to it privately
Listen to it with friends
Admire the artwork
Read the sleevenotes
Evangelise to friends and acquaintances
Discuss it with friends and acquaintances
Write about it in a zine
Get excited prior to release date
Imagine what it sounds like based on reviews
Find a store that stocks it
Lend it to a friend or borrow it from a friend
Roll joints on it
Display it in your room

Things People Do With Albums In 2009

Listen to it privately
Listen to it with friends
Listen to it with strangers (eg via last.fm)
Read about it on news sites, review sites, Wikipedia
Evangelise and share it with friends, acquaintances and strangers
Discuss it with friends, acquaintances and strangers
Publically review and criticise it
Get excited prior to leak date
Share news of it
Hunt for a leak and judge the veracity of it
Remix tracks
Make fan videos or art
Interact directly with the people who made it
Display it as part of your online presence

Sorry to be self-centered but...

This assumes that in 1989 (1) the beings that reviewed records were not people, (2) that strangers didn't read and comment on each other's fanzines or writing, (3) that people only published friends and acquaintances in their own fanzines or magazines, (4) that people didn't talk to strangers, e.g. in bars or on campus, (5) that reading reviews on paper was only related to imagining what something sounds like, (6) whatever else I forgot.

But given that 2009 has the capacity to do better what I and people like me were already doing in 1989 (even though 2009 isn't as different in kind as that list implies), with many more people doing it and with everybody having the capacity to do it more often, so that 2009 might be considered something of the fulfillment of my 1989 dream,* how come the convo in 2009 isn't smarter than it was in 1989, how come my writing isn't far better now than it was then, how come my ideas haven't developed exponentially rather than circling around the same old same old, how come the music isn't better, etc.?

*1986, actually

Comments

in the wires

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

one thing that is different is the discreteness of connectivity:

magazines come out chunk-form and are unrevisable, hence there's a spike of pressure to get things right and sorted and argued through before deadlines, and a particular ecology of triage in respect of urgency before publication, geared to a long quiet period after publication where you can take everything in

the internet is the city that never sleeps: triage in respect of urgency is constantly jostled by new information (or old information in new form; or old information in old form but you forgot); and because you can always go back and rewrite any time you like, you sorta kinda don't need to get all your ducks in a row at time of discussion, hence can postpone "thinking stuff through" (ideally you're offloading this onto others, and some of us do just this, but lots don't; and i think there could easily evolve a consensus where "getting it better" is always postponed, because it can be retooled later)

Re: in the wires

[koganbot]

Disagree. The problem isn't that people don't think things through before posting, but that they can't or won't understand each other's response, and can't or won't make the effort to make themselves understood, and they drop out of the conversation while all issues are still open and standing. As I said, this is the problem in all media among rockwrite/musicwrite, past and present.

Re: in the wires

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

would WMS have had more prudctive arguments d'you think if it had come out say monthly? (obviously you'd have needed a staff and funding and... and ...)

as it was you were champion gunslinger taking on all-comers, AND the one trying to ensure the bouts happened and took their proper full time -- i think these are probably incompatible roles (and will be viewed as such even if they're not: makes you look like judge and contestant)

Re: in the wires

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i don't disagree with the claim that the problem seems unchanged even as the geometry of the medium has changed quite a lot: i am less certain about the claim that, because the problem seems unchanged (as the geometry of the medium has changed quite a lot), the causes of (and hence solution to) the problem are unchanged, and hence not really related to structure -- intuitively this seems quite unlikely to me, unless you reach for quite clumsy and overarching sociology

why are people bad at understanding each other's responses? because they come to the conversation with the wrong skills? (probably somewhat true, but more so now than when? and is this just a rockwrite issue?); because the structure is not set up to help? (an editor's solution: may be wrong, but it's how i'm trained to tinker); because rockwrite is self-selecting, and skews away from logic, patience, or whatever else it maybe be obtains in science or law or history or whatever? (= clumsy and overarching sociology?)

Re: in the wires

[koganbot]

Your word "structure" is confusing me, also I am about to leave the house, so briefly:

Hardly restricted to rockwrite, but certain issues may be more or less potent for rockwriters, e.g., rockwriters may be more susceptible to reverting to hallway feelings and justifications, etc. But yeah, it's overall cultural, including hardware, software, who gets paid (if anyone) and when and for what, and so on.

Alternate universes: e.g., when I talk about WMS I'm talking about early WMS, 1 through 7, which of course is before you were on board. In fact, in many ways it was a far better magazine in its later version, but much less a call-and-response proto-ilX zine. So an alternate universe might be, how would WMS been different if you and Simon Frith and someone like Dave Moore and someone like Tom Ewing had been involved in the early issues? What about Lester Bangs, who often got lost in his rhetoric but was someone who kept returning to his questions.

My guess is that frequency of publication would have made a lot less difference than I would have thought at the time.

My guess by the way is that the Internet era will eventually do better, that the advantages of the Web will eventually kick in, and the convo will progress.

Re: in the wires

[koganbot]

(Doesn't seem to me that "hallway-classroom" is a structure. At most it's part of a structure. It's a set of internalized only-partially in-effect behavioral conventions that not everyone adheres to, so hallway-classroom is just one side of a multi-sided dynamic.)