Digital space is here to stay

I thought Chris Anderson’s introduction to The Long Tail was interesting coming from a non-market, non-economic background. I think he’s right to say his hypothetical “Ben” is growing up in a different world in terms of information and the way culture or entertainment is being consumed. I’m interested in “this shattering of the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards” (8). Personally, I’m skeptical of this development in terms of its long term subversive power (which I think is the attitude Anderson takes here), but it seems to be a very powerful idea indeed.

My guess is that the market hasn’t caught up yet with the developments he mentions, but that it’s going to with a vengeance whether we recognize it as such or not. We constantly have new models replacing the old ie iTunes replaced the BMG catalog, netflix replaced Blockbuster, and Amazon replaced the retail catalog to name a few. Anderson’s argument is that these models are better because now instead of choosing between 100 things, you get to choose between 10,000 or more. This seems problematic in some ways--what about that video store I loved and the employees that could recommend me amazing films and give me different personal insights? What about that music store? that book store? But regardless, whether “mainstream” as we know it dies (American Idol, McDonald’s, South Park, NBC, Disney, Sony, Starbucks) it’s undeniably changing and undeniably powerful and here to stay for the time being. In fact, the only two things that really seem to be drastically changing market-wise in this introduction are movie and music consumption and distribution. Maybe it’s because these are the two forms of art/entertainment that everyone consumes in some way whether you’re 8 or 80, and they both are able exist dismembered from packaging; the kind of physicality you can hold in your hand.

Maybe because I’m not as engaged with digital communities or the web as others, I don’t understand the quote: “[today] The cultural landscape is a seamless continuum from high to low, with commercial and amateur content competing equally for [sic] attention” (6). It depends where you go on the web and if you’re like me who visits larger commercial sites like Facebook or CNN or NPR you get adds for Mercedes Benz, Slumdog Millionaire, Netflix, Sports Illustrated, Washington Post, Hershey’s, Advil—it’s essentially the same things you get in a television commercial. I also think this statement starts leaking pretty quickly when you take it outside the internet and apply it to other spaces like an urban one—you have local fliers, posters, advertisements, and graffiti (depending where you are geographically), but they’re drowned by a commercial and linguistic landslide of road signs, billboards, shopping malls, marquees, logos, maps, etc. Here, I’m constantly engaged in narrative, narrative space, and micro-histories ie “Boulder Historic District” or “Since 1985” that saturate, organize and orient. In a city I think those “niche” markets are always there, but they have to access you through the tradition channels—newspaper, newsletter, radio, flier, or physical interaction, and ultimately stay invisible. It also depends on how you experience or access a city space (or whatever space you navigate)—whether you walk through it, around it, whether you drive it or see it from a plane, but maybe as Kelly is suggesting, that is changing.

We are starting to experience these physical spaces differently—the supermarket, the gas station, the movie theatre, the stadium, the airport, are all being infiltrated by screens that require your skillful manipulation to successfully navigate those spaces. But so far, the technology hasn’t made these places obsolete or replaceable or revolutionized—it doesn’t yet drastically alter my experience there, but the offspring of that technology may soon.