roachboy

i am not sure that the creation of more "democratic" forms of distribution of outputs (video, sound, etc.) necessarily translates into anything like a liberation of anything YET...this is not to downplay its importance, either: what seems to be happening in the shorter run is a redefinition of expertise--how the notion is assigned, how it deploys, who gets to claim it, etc. away from the basically capitalist-bureaucratic notion of expertise as exclusive specialization--the mirror image of bureaucratic expertise in a narrow area. because this division of intellectual labor is mirrored in the organization of the educational system, you wont start seeing anything revolutionary until you start seeing education modifying its orientation.

power is primarily power over social reproduction.


tangentially related point:

for every band that gets signed to a major, there are hundreds that do not. which bands are "better"?

for every film that gets funded and distributed, there are hundreds of others made by "amateurs" that do not.
which films are "better"?

the problem of evaluating according to what is said or made rather than according to who makes it or which corporate entity profits from it remains unanswered in any simple inversion of the existing state of affairs.

loosening the chokehold of corporate control over production and distribution of cultural goods is a fine thing--but it is not revolutionary in itself.
loosening the equation of quality of production with a corporate imprimatur is also a fine thing--but almost all of the most interesting and radical production out there in the land is already happening well outside the narrow purview of corporate media.

the idea that corporate backing and quality of production of cultural goods have anything really to do with each other is nuts. it always has been.
to think otherwise is to think that markets are rational.
they aren't.

and i hope that the existing media structure never figures out how to generate cash from a more decentralized system.
i would enjoy watching the existing corporate media hegemony implode.
it is already happening in music.
where's the revolution?

open source has been around for a long time now: the idea was that it could rely on a meritocracy amongst programmers and develop better systems because of that.
it is a great idea, and a very interesting social process.
but where's the revolution?

and this from someone who finds the notion of the existing order burning to be a desirable one.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite