Since I’ve started blogging, I’ve been very interested in the relationship between technical and cultural innovation. Among other things, I make the point that this is now a two-way street: the development of the Internet is driven as much by cultural innovations, like the manifold uses of blogs, as by technical innovation, and in many cases it’s hard to distinguish between the two.
I gave a presentation on this at the Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) Conference a few months ago, and was invited to turn it into a paper for a special issue of a new journal, Cultural Science.
I was very favorably impressed by the issue when it came out, and also by the interval between submission and publication, which was quite a bit shorter than I’ve experienced in the past. To be precise …
…I submitted my manuscript at 14:31:46 today and received,at 1416:16:31, the announcement that the special issue, including my paper, had been published . That’s a total lag, from initial submission to publication, of 1:44:45 hours. I’m feeling a bit like a character in Accelerando (plug: Our seminar on Charles Stross is on its way)
{ 11 comments }
Oryx 10.23.08 at 9:08 am
Submitted it at 14:31, published at 14:16? You’re right, that *is* acceleration! Did you then read your own article in order to submit it, 15 minutes later? :)
Oryx 10.23.08 at 9:09 am
… it’s a whole new realm of possibility for self-plagiarism :)
Lex 10.23.08 at 9:10 am
Whichever set of figures you accept, it shows remarkable faith on the editors’ part in the proofreading abilities of their contributors.
John Quiggin 10.23.08 at 10:17 am
D’oh! Fixed now.
randomly selected reader 10.23.08 at 11:41 am
In the spirit of the argument made in the text: there’s a typo on the top of page 7… should read “since the late 1980s”, not “since the late 1980”.
HH 10.23.08 at 1:51 pm
It is rather a bland paper, but it shows a welcome awakening to thinking about a superorganism model of innovation. The coming battle between the wide open Google/G1 cell phone and the locked down IPhone will be a nice test of the power of undirected collective innovation vs. central entrepreneurial planning.
Lawrence Lessig has been way out in front of the examination of these issues, but even he underestimates the magnitude of the changes taking shape. Some of the most politically radical discarded notions of the 19th century will require reexamination as the world economy moves from capitalist controlled atoms to socially controlled bits.
John Emerson 10.23.08 at 4:34 pm
Since you’re interested, here’s another change. With the advent of Youtube, screencaps, cell-phone cameras, etc., the broadcast media have been changed back from a transient oral culture (where the past can be denied, forgotten, or redone) into an inscribed, written culture with a memory. For a long time TV and radio demagogues could pretend that they hadn’t said some of the things they’d said, and just wait for memories to fade as the issue died down. But now a clip can be played over and over again forever.
Bill O-Reilly actually believes that there’s something ethically wrong when someone else plays back today something that he said a month ago, or even yesterday. He calls it “Nazi behavior”, “stalking”, etc. etc. It’s impossible to know for sure what kind of reality he’s coming from, but his indignation is real. He’s been spoiled for a long time and has a tremendous sense of entitlement, as if he really IS The Common Man.
peter 10.23.08 at 5:53 pm
John #7 said: “the broadcast media have been changed back from a transient oral culture (where the past can be denied, forgotten, or redone) into an inscribed, written culture with a memory”
Strictly speaking, Youtube, screencaps, cell-phone cameras, etc, are visual cultures, not written ones. This has profound implications for the overwhelming domination that text has had in our modern, western society these last 250-odd years. We are likely to see its overthow, and not before time.
Charlie Whitaker 10.23.08 at 10:42 pm
This has profound implications for the overwhelming domination that text has had in our modern, western society these last 250-odd years. We are likely to see its overthow, and not before time.
There’s something I want to express about this statement, but I don’t seem to have the means. It’s just … it’s …
No. Not happening. And I don’t even know why.
John Emerson 10.24.08 at 2:09 am
Peter: No, my point is that Youtube, etc., provide a record or inscription, so that present statements are checkable against past statements. I’m stretching the meanings of “oral” vs. “written” , but a mutable consensus memory is one of the salient points of orality, and broadcast media (talk radio, talk shows, opinionators) were able to rely on forgetfulness before their performances could be routinely recorded by thousands of people.
We haven’t returned to a print-dominant culture, but we’ve partially escaped from the feverish broadcast rumor mill.
So “written” means “recoverable”, not “textual”.
salientdowns 10.27.08 at 1:43 am
No. Not happening. And I don’t even know why.
I do, and you probably do as well – because of the backspace key, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and other handy organizational/editing tools. Even a rudimentary text editor provides functionality that most A/V editing software can’t match: the ability to isolate segments of thought, reorganize them, take parts out and insert more sensible things instead, and reconnect them coherently.
Try clipping up a video like your average competent writer reorganizes an essay or blog entry, and you get something nearly unwatchable (e.g. Fog of War).
Text will remain dominant throughout the 21st century because it affords someone the opportunity to refine and polish their thoughts before presenting them. No visual media provides this ease of versatility to people working in the medium.
If anything, the fact that so many people interact with the Internet suggests an increasing importance for written text, and thus a reason for more people to want to be literate. Whereas your average TV viewer could get by without being very literate, someone who interacts with Youtube will engage in text keyword-based searches, and more involved users might even write scripts for video ideas.
And no, “kids jumping around on couches or doing other adolescent stuff and filming themselves doing it” will not shatter the utility of text somehow. Kids have been jumping around on couches and acting stupid in order to amuse and interest each other for about as long as there’s been leisure time for adolescents, and the fact that they now capture it on film to giggle over later doesn’t somehow negate the usefulness of text.
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