insight

We went to a concert last night at a place called Knitting Factory, one of those intimate clubs with a couple-hundred-person, standing room only sort of vibe. Anna managed to claim an armchair that put us nearish to the stage (as in, my tinitis faided within 2 hours of the show, but we still had a great view). What struck me, however, was the small army of digital camcorders that were sprouting like weeds from the first couple of rows.

And I realized - more than a few of those people are going to take those recordings home, and spend today importing them and editing them in easy to use software and burning them to a DVD to add to their libraries, or possibly to trade over the Internet or via snail mail with other concert bootleg entheusiasts.

THIS is what the culture industry should be worried about, when it comes to digital technology. Unauthorized reproduction might be irksome, but as long as the industry remains hit-based it won't be totally undermined (and if it actually embraced a micropayment long tail model ala iTunes, it might even propser, but that's a whole other rant). The real threat of digital media technology is that it commoditizes skill. Even five years ago, it would have required access to specific and specialized equipment - and an understanding of how it worked - to digitally film a concert, edit it, and create a DVD; it is now possible to do it all with about a thousand bucks worth of off the shelf equipment with little to no skill and certainly zero training. Granted the result of what I saw people playing with last night will not be production quality, but the fact that it's possible at all is without precedent in our media consumption history. Even with a camcorder, each subsequent dupe of the recording gets a little more fuzzy and a little less audible.

Some people get it. Trent Reznor has figured out that making multitrack sessiosn of his songs available in Acid and Garage Band formats draws attention to his "official" version ala his new CD. Wonder how long it'll take for others to catch on.

The culture packagers are right to be worried. ironically they're worried about entirely the wrong thing.

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apropos of nothing, I got a new hardback copy of Orson Scott Card's Shadow of the Hegemon for 74 cents last night.