å Tuesday, September 8th, 2015

Taylor’s argument states that the fate of creative people in the new economy exists in two incommensurable realms of value; the purely economic activity and the elevated forms of value we associate with art and culture. The first realm deals with the idea that work is done for money, and she refers to this group as the “professionals”. Benkler and Shirky argue that only those who despise their work deserve to be paid for their efforts. The second group deals with those who work for the love of it, or the “amateurs”. Professionals and amateurs are sometimes separated by skill, but always separated by motivation, because the essence of amateurism is intrinsic motivation. As a result, amateurs are willing to work and produce content simply for the love of it, and may even lose money in order to feed their desire to create, while professionals are motivated by the economic gain that comes from working.

Taylor highlights something that affects our society currently; the idea that work must be enjoyable and that you must love what you do for a living. The problem however, is that we tend to believe that the labor of those who appear to love what they do does not by definition qualify as labor. Taylor states “what sounds like idealism reveals itself to be the opposite because it is deeply cynical to deny professionals any emotional investment in their work.”
The challenge faced by teachers, activists and artists is that there is a commonly held belief that we should work for love and not money, and this helps justify corporations’ unwillingness to compensate in jobs that are believed to serve the public. The idea of the “starving artist” is sensationalized by new media thinkers, almost as though they believe this is a rite of passage for those in the arts and culture. Taylor states that for these new media thinkers, “the ideal worker is an individual who is versatile and rootless, inventive and adaptable; who self-motivates and works long hours, one who loves work so much, he or she would do it no matter what and so expects little compensation or commitment in return.” As a result of this thinking, people in these jobs settle for little compensation because they believe it is better to love what they do, and they disregard the fact that you can love what you do and be compensated handsomely for it as well.

Taylor (2014:50) argues that the fate of creative people, in the new economy, is to “exist in two incommensurable realms of value and be torn between them–on the one side, the purely economic activity associated with straightforward selling of goods or labor; on the other the fundamentally different, elevated forms of value we associate with art and culture.”   Your hybrid writing assignment this week is to describe these two realms and the challenges they pose for artists, teachers, activists and others who view their work as serving “the public good.”

In the latter portion of the second chapter of The People’s Platform, Taylor elaborates on a concept raised perhaps most enthusiastically by Richard Florida in his descriptions of the “Creative Class.” In Florida’s vision, a natural consequence of the digitally networked economy and increasing automation is a reorientation of the bourgeoisie as a class of creatives who traffic in ideas, creativity and information rather than material goods or everyday services. There is a deterministic rationale behind Florida’s writing as he uses data to parse a descriptive rather than normative claim about the changes in society, but by discounting the near term pain of technological displacement and offering no solutions outside the framework of market capitalism, Florida’s writing does indeed take on a normative tone. The message seems to be “leave your hotel front desk job and take up a graphic design course or face obsolescence.”

Missing also from Florida’s analysis is how precisely creatives, notoriously inept at salesmanship, will collaborate and compete in the supposedly freer market. Taylor addresses this head on in the above quote where she is describing the transitional pains being experienced by creatives at present. In our economy that has been diluted of middlemen, artists nakedly face a public ill suited to parse through massive swaths of content. The effect on art has been commercial success for those who know how to navigate the byways of social media and marketing or ascend into the mass market from popular content sharing platforms (as in the case of EL James). Those who lack such skills, knowledge or time are marginalized from an artistic community that once held a strict firewall between sales and creation. This has the effect of turning artists into salespersons first and creators second, in effect culturally sanitizing the work as appeal and the bottom line have to be considered alongside artistic vision.

This tension, however, is not new and is the byproduct of living in a commercial society that attempts to extract value at the lowest possible margins. In my view, Taylor laments an era that was already cemented in privileges of cultural curation. The privilege now has shifted to those with a particular set of skills; namely creativity alongside marketability whereas previously it was networking and culturally insular notions of taste that led to artistic success. It is difficult to say if the “wisdom of crowds” that Lanier and others lament is worse than the prior system, but it is certainly different and the change comes at a cost. Taylor describes the bias against the longer produced more content rich forms of art as a consequence of the efficiency culture the new media milieu begets. Efficiency is touted as something to aspire towards, which discounts that some taste may not be divined algorithmically and that some excellent work may be woefully inefficient. The market, as ever, is reductive to culture as it is principally concerned with utilizing culture to enlarge the wealth of individuals rather than preserving it for its own sake.

Beyond art, other public good professionals (which Florida would also lump into his creative class) such as educators, activists, and scientists must also survive in our present system. As growing amateurization and automation dilute the value of labor across the board, professions such as these find themselves increasingly vulnerable to attack. It is not difficult to imagine funding in the sciences shifting to companies who own proprietary algorithms set to work in server farms to calculate complex proofs or genetic datasets. Likewise, it isn’t difficult to imagine virtual reality classrooms and wiki-homeschooling displacing public education while philanthropy and activism is reduced to crowdfunding campaigns. As long as the market economy continues to dominate, we will see either a brain drain in these sectors, should these scenarios come to pass, or we will see them become less accessible and thus contributory to inequality. The notion that art, activism, or education are or will be done “for the love” is missing the basic ingredients of quality control and a need to place a higher valuation on those who grant our society these critical services.

On page 18 paragraph 2, Taylor uses the term digital feudalism in the concept of our information being “sold” to the social media. In addition, the two terms “techno skeptics” and “new media cheerleader” are quiet opposite from each other. Techno skeptics is the idea that companies should pay the users for sharing private informations with the media. In contrast, new media cheerleader is the idea that because the users already know the terms and regulation prior to creating the account, users should know that the information being shared is open to everyone to see.

The concept of digital feudalism may seem like a way to protect our privacy, however the protection of our privacy seems almost impossible if one is signing up for anything related to “social” media. After all, sharing our information is what companies are getting their profit from and eliminating that would not benefit the companies.

New Economy

According to Taylor’s text, the New Economy emerged during the late nineties and was based solely on the buying and selling of ordinary goods; taking material that was available offline and making it available online. However, in 2000 capital funds increased significantly and online shopping failed to keep up. The New Economy vanished but gave way to a “second bubble”, Web 2.0 which monetized our sociability. Taylor states “To put it another way, Web 2.0 is not about users buying products; rather, users are the product.” (p.14)

Group Members:

Janelle Figueroa
Deborah Markewich
Steve Jeannot
Angeline Henriquez

Yesenia (yessie) Williams

9/7/2015

Hybrid Assignment 2

In Astra Taylor’s chapter “Love or Money”, she discusses the way artists view their work and for what purpose it serves. The reason artists produce art and how they are truly compensated for their artistry, is a question that still is debatable. Taylor argues that artists seek to feed both their creative souls, as well as, put food on the table and have money to live. The ongoing struggle of producing art only puts into focus “the demands of the gift and the market”. (pg. 50) The hope is that eventually the work they produce will be recognized while keeping their creativity and job enjoyable. Taylor discusses how often the assumption that enjoying your job “does not by definition qualify as labor” (Pg. 51) For this reason, many artists today have to decide what it means to remain true to their craft while possibly sacrificing it to be paid.

The fate that creative people hold in the new economy is in fact between two realms as Taylor describes. To be torn “on one side, the purely economic activity, and on the other, the fundamentally different, elevated form of value we associate with art and culture.” (pg. 50) This challenges artists, for example, musicians, who work and are faced with the decisions that will ultimately force them to either one, sacrifice their creativity to fit into the mainstream music production culture, or be continuing to make their music but possibly not “make it”. The notion that artists are all “starving artists” still remains to be a true view. Often times, artists are struggling to make ends meet and find themselves picking up other odd jobs to compensate for the lack of income associated with pursuing a field of artistry.

The economy is connected to art in the way that it is promoted. Taylor sees it as a producing system that’s only concern is profit through heavy advertising. The value placed on art and culture has been lessened by the all-encompassing desire to be recognized, even if the cost is selling themselves short of their deserved reward.The Internet is contrived to service the advertisers who are paying for specific services, which makes one question, how is creativity truly being expressed?

Hybrid Assignment #2

Dree-el Simmons
IAS 31168 – Digital Media & Society
September 7, 2015

In response to this week’s hybrid assignment quote by Taylor, to “exist in two incommensurable realms of value and be torn between them–on the one side, the purely economic activity associated with straightforward selling of goods or labor; on the other the fundamentally different, elevated forms of value we associate with art and culture,” I see this as referring to the commoditization of all of our creative outputs. What I mean by that is, it seems that in the world of today, we must have a dollar amount attached to everything that we do. It all must ultimately whittle down to the dollars and cents. It is true that, for the majority of people that self-identify as artist, are still thought of & seen as labeled with the familiar moniker of the “starving artist” – thus, attesting to the fact that it is nearly impossible to be a self-sustaining artist. The value associated with the arts is diminished in comparison to those more “professional” career paths.
This paradigm can be more clearly understood by looking at current American Pop Culture. Many of today’s most famous and well known actors, singers and artists of all types, were once “starving artists” who were lucky enough to become successful and have the ability to sustain themselves by their artist expression. However, this is not the case for the majority of artist. Many actors, dancers and singers are often under employed in the traditional work force in largely service related industries like food service, retail and/or per diem labor because these types of employment situations allow for greater flexibility to pursue their various artistic endeavors, while they carve out a very meager living/income to sustain themselves. For many, this leads to a need to choose between financial security and creativity. And, this need of financial stability supersedes their desire for artistic expression, thus forcing them to conform to a life of drudgery; working in unfulfilling jobs. It is also funny that, these same people are then also judged for not being dedicated to their art; because they are forced to find ways and means to support themselves, which ultimately decreases the time and energy they have to pursue/produce creative expressions.
This is a rather accurate and insightful quote. One that most of us have/do identify with for various reasons, when we find ourselves saying/thinking that there’s just not quite enough time for us to do all the things that we need and want to do.