joshcryer
joshcryer's JournalIf you look at media we have iTunes (music), Netflix (video), Amazon (ebooks), Steam (videogames).
They're all either already dominate (in the case of iTunes at least) or getting there. Netflix as it stands now does not have a distribution mechanism for self-made videos, so YouTube may be a better metric to use there. YouTube "personalities" tend to be the largest content creators there, though, commentators, reality show types or people who make comedy. They all get paid relatively well in all spheres. They all have a 70/30 royalty breakdown (it appears to be the norm though I think 99/1 would be more fair or 100:0 if we're in a rational world where the net is free). Actually that's not necessarily true in the case of YouTube because they don't have a per-view payment type thing. For video let's just skip that for now, because it's going to come eventually.
I mean you look at Blender open projects and can see a lot of people working together for something to create for society as a whole. I think that video is lagging behind music and authorship and probably even games because it's just so daunting to get into that sphere of artistry. You need expensive digital cameras, you need a crew (and have to pay that crew, too, even on a hobby level if people aren't all getting paid it can go sour for a group of friends). Once we have the toolsets to actually provide good realistic video (and if you look at the progress Blender is making with their Cycles engine I don't think it's too far off), we'll have people creating toolsets that allow them to make arbitrary films with ease. At that point the whole sphere of influence will change. We can already make highly complex musical pieces without much human interaction (I'm writing a proper front end, so watch that space, you'll be able to make any musical piece that you can conceive and it will be as easy as moving some sliders around, right now it's in a developmental state but still quite usable). Once that happens with video, that is, you sit down, imagine an environment, put in some variables, and pow the toolsets create the environment you thought of, it's all over but the crying for the hollywood movie industry.
Yes, in the end it does suck, and maybe the end of paper will suck for you, I don't know for sure, because you do say you want to offer print, but I think it's the way everything is heading, and this hegemony on media will be over for it.
I can imagine in the end that we'll have an open, free, distribution network where you can subscribe to media that people make, the makers will get paid 99% of what is paid, and everyone will benefit. And that means that in the end a show with 100k viewers or a musical piece with 100k listeners, each person pays a buck and pow, those involved get $100k per unique deliverable (TV show, musical piece, etc). It's grand, I think. Truly grand where things are heading.
Of course, I am going on a really crazy tangent here so I'll shut up now. 
Yeah, except Marx invented the proletariat, lumpenproletariat and petit bourgeoisie.
The key is that he used those subgroups to explicitly pit them against one another, whereas practical progressivism tries to solve issues within subgroups because society as a whole is not going to magically change. White people aren't suddenly going to refuse the privileges that they have based upon their cultural place in society. I'm not going to, for example, tell the cashier to check my $20 bill after having just checked the $20 bill of the colored person in front of me. I'm going to sigh as they put the $20 bill in the register without even giving it a second thought and maybe hate myself a little for noticing that and not using it as an opportunity to teach a lesson, because the cashier probably wouldn't even know what they did, and I'm timid in real life.
Profile Information
Name: Josh CryerGender: Male
Hometown: Colorado
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 62,269
