Why Getting the User To Create Web Content Isn't Always Progress
on Wall Street Journal
by Lee Gomes, June 7, 2006
At first, it seemed like the sort of silly, self-serving thing that many companies are wont to say about their products. Only later did I realize it represented the opening of another front in the battle against traditional culture being waged by certain parts of the technology industry.
I was in the offices of an Internet company, and an executive was demonstrating an online movie-editing service the company's engineers had built. In addition to the software, there were several short films the company had received permission to make available for downloading. "Until now, watching a movie has been an entirely passive experience," the speaker explained.
Now, though, he said, users will be able to actively make their own new movie, or at least a short clip, by mixing up scenes from the site's small online library. One such creation was displayed: Through editing, people from one film were made to seem to be reacting to events and people that, in fact, were from another movie.
"Great, isn't it?" asked the presenter.
Not really. Watching a good movie is "passive" in the same way that looking at a great painting is "passive" -- which is, not very; you're quite actively lost in thought. For my friend, though, the only activity that seemed "active," and thus worthwhile, was when a person sitting at a PC engaged in digital busy work of some kind.
The short cinematic pastiche we saw is an example of what has come to be called a "mash-up," and for a big part of the tech world, these sorts of mash-ups are becoming the highest form of cultural production.
This is most clearly occurring in books. Most of us were taught that reading books is synonymous with being civilized. But in certain tech circles, books have come to be regarded as akin to radios with vacuum tubes, a technology soon to make an unlamented journey into history's dustbin.
The New York Times Magazine recently had a long essay on the future of books that gleefully predicted that bookshelves and libraries will cease to exist, to be supplanted by snippets of text linked to other snippets of text on computer hard drives. Comments from friends and others would be just as important as the original material being commented on; Keats, say.
Imagine a long email message with responses and earlier messages included. We'll have those in lieu of "Middlemarch" or "The Corrections." Picking up on the theme, another writer suggested that traditional books "are where words go to die."
It is an odd state of affairs when books or movies need defending, especially when the replacement proffered by certain Web-oriented companies and their apologists is so dismally inferior: chunks and links and other bits of evidence of epidemic ADD. Reading some stray person's comment on the text I happen to be reading is about as appealing as hearing what the people in the row behind me are saying about the movie I'm watching.
In high school, we were required for social studies to take the lyrics of Pete Seeger's "Turn Turn (Turn)," the one with "a time for love, a time for hate," and illustrate it with pictures clipped out of Time magazine.
It was a pre-Internet mash-up, and we got busy with our scissors and glue and had lots of fun. I'm not sure what we learned, though. Today's mash-ups remind me of those Time magazine collages: all cutting and pasting, signifying nothing.
Another way that people describe mash-ups is "user-generated content," referred to by the smart set as "UGC." Most of the time, when companies talk about user-generated content, they mean nothing grander than the pictures you store on Web sites or the pages that MySpace members spend hours fussing over.
But for those preaching the glories of the new mash-up culture, UGC is bringing about a new golden age, with the Internet giving a platform to everyone, not just elite writers or filmmakers.
The video-sharing site YouTube is a poster child for this sensibility, since anyone can upload just about anything to it. For a sense of what this new world is like, you can consult the site's "Top Favorites." There are several dance segments, people imitating ninjas or lip-synching songs, and a (very funny, actually) dog who growls at his own leg. You can spend 10 minutes and take in all of it. Spend much more, and you start feeling guilty about the time you're wasting.
Contrast that group of videos with the list you get when you search for the most non-UGC, least mashed-up collection of TV shows I could think of: "Favourite 20th century BBC TV programmes." (You need the British spelling for the search to work properly.)
These aren't all twee costume dramas. No. 1 is "Fawlty Towers." No. 2 is "Cathy Come Home," a Ken Loach drama about the homeless that first aired in 1966 but is still vividly remembered. The rest of the list includes dramas and sci-fi and talk shows and sitcoms, all of them, in their own way, weighty meals for the mind. You can watch them decade after decade, and never feel guilty at all.
read also Customer-made
by Lee Gomes, June 7, 2006
At first, it seemed like the sort of silly, self-serving thing that many companies are wont to say about their products. Only later did I realize it represented the opening of another front in the battle against traditional culture being waged by certain parts of the technology industry.I was in the offices of an Internet company, and an executive was demonstrating an online movie-editing service the company's engineers had built. In addition to the software, there were several short films the company had received permission to make available for downloading. "Until now, watching a movie has been an entirely passive experience," the speaker explained.
Now, though, he said, users will be able to actively make their own new movie, or at least a short clip, by mixing up scenes from the site's small online library. One such creation was displayed: Through editing, people from one film were made to seem to be reacting to events and people that, in fact, were from another movie.
"Great, isn't it?" asked the presenter.
Not really. Watching a good movie is "passive" in the same way that looking at a great painting is "passive" -- which is, not very; you're quite actively lost in thought. For my friend, though, the only activity that seemed "active," and thus worthwhile, was when a person sitting at a PC engaged in digital busy work of some kind.
The short cinematic pastiche we saw is an example of what has come to be called a "mash-up," and for a big part of the tech world, these sorts of mash-ups are becoming the highest form of cultural production.
This is most clearly occurring in books. Most of us were taught that reading books is synonymous with being civilized. But in certain tech circles, books have come to be regarded as akin to radios with vacuum tubes, a technology soon to make an unlamented journey into history's dustbin.
The New York Times Magazine recently had a long essay on the future of books that gleefully predicted that bookshelves and libraries will cease to exist, to be supplanted by snippets of text linked to other snippets of text on computer hard drives. Comments from friends and others would be just as important as the original material being commented on; Keats, say.
Imagine a long email message with responses and earlier messages included. We'll have those in lieu of "Middlemarch" or "The Corrections." Picking up on the theme, another writer suggested that traditional books "are where words go to die."
It is an odd state of affairs when books or movies need defending, especially when the replacement proffered by certain Web-oriented companies and their apologists is so dismally inferior: chunks and links and other bits of evidence of epidemic ADD. Reading some stray person's comment on the text I happen to be reading is about as appealing as hearing what the people in the row behind me are saying about the movie I'm watching.
In high school, we were required for social studies to take the lyrics of Pete Seeger's "Turn Turn (Turn)," the one with "a time for love, a time for hate," and illustrate it with pictures clipped out of Time magazine.
It was a pre-Internet mash-up, and we got busy with our scissors and glue and had lots of fun. I'm not sure what we learned, though. Today's mash-ups remind me of those Time magazine collages: all cutting and pasting, signifying nothing.
Another way that people describe mash-ups is "user-generated content," referred to by the smart set as "UGC." Most of the time, when companies talk about user-generated content, they mean nothing grander than the pictures you store on Web sites or the pages that MySpace members spend hours fussing over.
But for those preaching the glories of the new mash-up culture, UGC is bringing about a new golden age, with the Internet giving a platform to everyone, not just elite writers or filmmakers.
The video-sharing site YouTube is a poster child for this sensibility, since anyone can upload just about anything to it. For a sense of what this new world is like, you can consult the site's "Top Favorites." There are several dance segments, people imitating ninjas or lip-synching songs, and a (very funny, actually) dog who growls at his own leg. You can spend 10 minutes and take in all of it. Spend much more, and you start feeling guilty about the time you're wasting.
Contrast that group of videos with the list you get when you search for the most non-UGC, least mashed-up collection of TV shows I could think of: "Favourite 20th century BBC TV programmes." (You need the British spelling for the search to work properly.)
These aren't all twee costume dramas. No. 1 is "Fawlty Towers." No. 2 is "Cathy Come Home," a Ken Loach drama about the homeless that first aired in 1966 but is still vividly remembered. The rest of the list includes dramas and sci-fi and talk shows and sitcoms, all of them, in their own way, weighty meals for the mind. You can watch them decade after decade, and never feel guilty at all.
read also Customer-made
posted by Gripplly at
14:46
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