Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk.
Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry.
Even sculpture is going to succumb, as Second Life residents can create complex avatars and then have them 3D printed into a physical item. It's early days now, but it's not going to be long before you can create any shape you like and have it printed, allowing anyone to become a sculptor without ever having to deal with physical materials.
What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not.
If you read my personal blog, Chocolate and Vodka, you'll know that I'm learning Ruby on Rails. Ruby is a programming language, and Rails is a programming framework. The way it works is that you set up your database, and then you ask Rails to, say, create your input form, and it writes the Ruby and the HTML you need in order to create a web page that allows you to input data into your database. I have very little ability when it comes to programming, but I am learning Ruby on Rails and I see no reason why I can't start creating my own web-based applications within the next few months.
Like 3D printing, this is just the beginning. Ning and Coghead are attempts to make web app development easier, but as they, and RoR, evolve we're going to see people with no programming skills able to make their own web apps without ever having to learn a line of code.
The future is going to contain lots of small, agile development projects, and I'm not the only one who thinks this. Evan Williams recently wrote about what he calls the Obvious model for building and running web products:
The Obvious model goes something like this:
* Build things cheaply and rapidly by keeping teams small and self-organized.
* Leverage technology, know-how, and infrastructure across products (but brand them separately, so they're focused and easy to understand)
* Use the aggregate attention and user base of the network to gain traction for new services faster than they could gain awareness independentlyevhead: The Birth of Obvious Corp.
Hosting is affordable; Google's AdSense makes raising revenue from ads simple to set up (which doesn't necessarily mean you'll get much revenue, mind); and blogs make it easier to promote your app. Just like every other area of human creativity, the barriers are coming down.
I was at a 'future of...' session the other week, and one of the trends I suggested was important was 'the ubiquity of everything'. My fellow brainstormers didn't seem to agree with the word 'everything', but I think we are moving towards a world where the only things that are rare are certain physical resources, and attention.
We already have more movies available than any one person can watch; more videos on YouTube; more blogs; more podcasts; more internet radio; more books; more software; more web apps; more games; more everything. It's not like we're starting from a point of scarcity here. And the flood of stuff is going to turn into a rampaging torrent as more people get online and more people get excited by their ability to participate and create.
In the past, the media acted as gatekeepers. They were the ones that went to the movie previews and told us which ones were good or crap. They were the ones who went to all the gigs and told us which bands were cool or rubbish. They were the ones who got the advance copy of the game and told us whether it was playable or tedious. They were the arbiters of taste, the people in the know, the ones with the connections needed to get at culture before us plebs got at it.
But we don't need gatekeepers anymore. We don't need people who stand between us and our stuff, deciding what to tell us about and what to ignore. We don't need arbiters of taste. There are so many blogs out there reviewing software and web apps and films and books and every other sort of creativity that we don't need to rely on the media's old gatekeepers telling us what we should like.
We do, however, still need help. There's just too much stuff around for us to know what's out there, to keep up with what's good, what works for us, what is worth investigation. What we need are curators. And we need them badly.
We need people who can gather together the things that are of interest to us, things that fit with our tastes or challenge us in interesting ways, things that enrich our lives and help us enjoy our time rather than waste it on searching.
Curators already exist. Some are people: Bloggers who sift through tonnes of stuff in order to highlight what they like, and who, if you have the same taste as them, can be invaluable to discovering new things to like. Some are aggregators: Site that gather lots of little bits of stuff and present them in aggregation and help us find the bits that the majority find to be good. Some are algorithms: recommendation systems and search.
But curation of the web has barely started. Much of what you could call curation that exists today is flawed: too many noisy opinions and not enough capacity to understand what I as an individual want; recommendation algorithms that produce seemingly random results; and the problem of 'popularity begetting popularity'.
The great challenge for us, and the web, going forward is no longer breaking down the barriers to creation, it's finding our way through the huge amounts of creativity that's resulted.
1. anton on November 24, 2006 12:09 PM writes...
This is interesting. I agree a lot becomes possible easier and easier. But is it freedom/selfdetermination or is it a marketing/commercial/social indoctrination that makes people do all this?
Permalink to Commentcan we be happy or are we supposed to act as if?
2. raize on November 29, 2006 7:39 AM writes...
You are a genius...I have been looking for an article such as this for quite some time. You have summed up the next evolution of the internet...now google doesn't look so big
Permalink to Comment3. Vera Bass on December 12, 2006 5:48 PM writes...
Hi Suw,
I agree with your statement that we will need 'curators'. Perhaps because my definition of curator begins with those I know in prestigious museums, combined with my familiarity with the depth and scope of their specialized knowledge, I have a hard time seeing web curators identifying themselves out of the ranks of bloggers ...unless the sum of web based knowledge is to mostly be a combination of technology and popular entertainment/news bites.
Although I can also imagine the application of technology itself developing virtual 'curators', the scope of knowledge and understanding that might be lost concerns me.
Vera
Permalink to Comment4. El Jefe on December 14, 2006 12:40 AM writes...
Great read, thanks very much. I really like the idea of curators, and I can imagine how a system could automate the way in which any given curator would gain or lose credibility based on user feedback. The big problem I think is standardization and enforcement, I suppose. The only adhered-to standards on the net are technical in nature, rather than organizational. Maybe a TRUSTe-certified curator program?
Permalink to Comment5. csven on January 5, 2007 9:34 PM writes...
This sounded familiar to me ( http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2005/08/the_long_tail_o.html ). I do like the term "curator", though a more clear definition would be nice, because it might then assist in resolving the issue Vera raises: from where do they come?
Permalink to Comment6. tim on February 12, 2007 1:21 PM writes...
Interesting info. Actually, different parts of the world may behave differently. Take China, where government control is still going strong. To learn more about what is really happening inside there, read this great book: China and the new world order, by the outspoken Chinese journalist George Zhibin Gu, which offers the truest picture about the corrupt government as well as changing politics, business and society.
Permalink to Comment7. Danny L. McDaniel on February 14, 2007 4:11 PM writes...
It is very similiar to the "mass amateuriztion." Technology has provided so much information and influence at our finger tips that we can all be "experts" in just about all fields of endeavor. That would be almost exactly the same as "democratization of everything." The power the average person can exert locally, nationally and globally is enormous and growing exponentially. At no time in human history has the average person been placed in such a critical role in civilization. But the flipside we all now live in land of giants. All of us are the leaders of the future and have electronic voice that can be heard.
Permalink to Comment8. Kevin Jones on March 7, 2007 5:41 PM writes...
> "But the flipside we all now live in land of giants. All of us are the leaders of the future and have electronic voice that can be heard."
--------
This is simply a transition period we are experiencing. Equilibrium will follow. I agree that we now live in a land of giants...but if everyone is a giant, then nobody is a giant.
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. The people with vision will always shine even if we need to wait a little before we learn to dismiss the unworthy creations before we even know they exist.
Permalink to Comment9. Danny L. McDaniel on April 30, 2007 6:18 PM writes...
If everything is democratised than everything is politized. Everyone has a solution but no one has a definite answer. I think a better term is "mass ameutaurizatiom." Now everyone is an expert!
Danny L. McDaniel
Permalink to CommentLafayette, Indiana
10. Adam Zbiejczuk on May 15, 2007 11:29 PM writes...
Hi, thanks for the optimism, but I wonder whether it's all that easy. not taking in question the problem of china and the like - it's true we need curators, but even they work pretty much for the very beginning of the long tail (read: not hits, but hits for niches), not for the very long tail itself. the amount of information available is rising incredibly, but it's the same as with myspace: 98% is crap, and it's not that easy to find the gems. the recommendation systems don't work a lot for the tail, since they are flawed with friends-of-friends, and still it's quite tricky to get the really interesting stuff out to larger audience. or maybe we don't need to? and the whole question lays elsewhere...
Permalink to Commentanyway, i thought that this "against long tail over-optimism" article may interest you:
http://whimsley.typepad.com/whimsley/2007/03/the_long_tail_1.html
11. Ian Thorpe on July 26, 2007 4:59 PM writes...
But do we need another programming language? And is it really a programming language, the fact that you are learning it on a "framework" suggests it is a scripting language.
And a final question, is wizaed technology enough to save the world or do we need human qualities too?
Maybe the people who make money from the fascination with technology understand that if they do not keep a constant stream of novelties coming along people might start to get bout into the real world and discover how cool HAVING A LIFE can be.
Permalink to Comment12. Ian Thorpe on July 26, 2007 5:00 PM writes...
But do we need another programming language? And is it really a programming language, the fact that you are learning it on a "framework" suggests it is a scripting language.
And a final question, is wizaed technology enough to save the world or do we need human qualities too?
Maybe the people who make money from the fascination with technology understand that if they do not keep a constant stream of novelties coming along people might start to get bout into the real world and discover how cool HAVING A LIFE can be.
Permalink to Comment13. Paul Branswick on August 19, 2007 9:28 PM writes...
We always need new languages because we always need a new and more effective way to communicate with computers and to translate our ideas to binary world.
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