John Perry Barlow on Tue, 15 Jul 1997 05:37:10 +0200 (MET DST) |
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Re: <nettime> Bandwidth and Content |
At 10:11 AM -0400 7/14/97, Eric Kluitenberg wrote: > >Bandwidth and Content > >In the context of the 'We Want Bandwidth!' workshop >@ Hybrid Workspace, documenta x - Kassel, July 12, 1997. Thank you for a very thoughtful and concise statement, with which I agree in nearly every particular. (I hope this doesn't tarnish your reputation with other Nettimers...) I do take small issue with a couple of points. First, I have yet to see much evidence that >Within those regions of the earth where >bandwidth is expanding rapidly the big players in the media and >entertainment industry are much better equipped to seize the larger part of >the audience, with well designed, engaging programs and services. While this is certainly true in theory, it fails to take into account the cultural difficulties that large "industrial" media organizations encounter with the culture of the Net - and, though it comes in many local flavors, I believe that Cyberspace has a discernible culture and will continue to. In any event, I can't think of a single Web initiative by an existing media giant that isn't massively hemorrhaging investment capital. I think companies like Time Warner and Disney are about as likely to control webcasting as the steamship and railroad companies were to seize the infant air transport industry. Secondly, while there is a rough correlation between bandwidth and attention, they are not the same. As Nicholas Negroponte pointed out, a wink is only one bit. This is why e-mail continues to be overwhelmingly text based despite the ability of many systems to easily carry voice and video messages. (I have a NeXTcube that could easily incorporate voice into a message clear back in 1989. Most NeXT users never sent more than about five voice messages, even though we generally had plenty of bandwidth and storage at our disposal.) In other words, I would reckon that e-mail, by far the largest component of Net traffic, will remain largely text-based for the rest of my life. Indeed, one of the most prolific and visible Net posters and e-mailists I know is a former CIA analyst who still uses the same IBM XT and 2400 baud modem he bought back in 1985. He could afford far more, but he likes the discipline required by these limitations. And indeed, they are not so limiting. Would Das Kapital have been more influential had it contained a gig or so of QuickTime clips? That said, I do believe that although the currency of the future is attention, and it will often be expressed and traded as bandwidth. People will fight over bandwidth as they have fought over money, sex, power, water, drugs, or any of the other things of which it could be said that "the more you have, the shorter it feels." Social inequity, except in the most desperate conditions, is often more a matter of perceived unfairness of distribution than a survival need for the goods being distributed. In the places I've been where *everybody* is poor and where there are no televisions to taunt the natives with the "good life" in "Dallas" or "Santa Barbara," the general level of contentment seems higher than anywhere I go in America. But the moment they become aware of how much "more" other humans have, the riots begin. Perhaps the greatest favor we could grant the unwired world would be to encourage them not to chain themselves to the never-ending desire for more. **************************************************************** John Perry Barlow, Cognitive Dissident Co-Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation Home(stead) Page: http://www.eff.org/~barlow MegaPhone: 800/654-4322 Barlow in Meatspace Today: Philadelphia 215/563-1600 Coming soon to: Philadelphia 7/14-16, New York City 7/17-18, Cambridge, MA 7/18-20, New York City, 7/20-27, London 7/27-31, The Dark Continent... ***************************************************************** When a man is wrapped up in himself he makes a pretty small package. --John Ruskin --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de