The Long Tail

This is an excerpt from "The Long Tail" by Chris Anderson. It is a fascinating book that you all should go and read. I haven't figured out the practical application to the knowledge in this book, but it is in there. I know. Scary, scary things.

"Is a fragmented culture a better or worse culture? Many believe that mass culture serves as a sort of social glue, keeping society together. But if we're now all off doing our own thing, is there still a common culture? Are our interests still aligned with those of our neighbors?

In his book Republic.com, University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein argues that the risks are real- online culture is indeed encouraging group polarization: "As the customization of our communications universe increases, society is in danger of fragmenting, shared communities in danger of dissolving." He evokes the famous Daily Me, the ultimate personalized newspaper hypothesized by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT's Media Lab. To Sunstein, a world where we are all reading our own Daily Me is one where " you need not come across topics and views that you have not sought out. Without any difficulty, you are able to see exactly what you want to see, no more and no less."

Christine Rosen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, shares Sunstein's concerns. In an essay in The New Atlantis, she writes:

If these technologies facilitate polarization in politics, what influence are they exerting over art, literature, and music? In our haste to find the quickest, most convenient, and most easily individualized way of getting what we want, are we creating eclectic personal theaters or sophisticated echo chambers? Are we promoting a creative individualism or a narrow individualism? An expansion of choice or a deadening of taste?

The effect of these technologies, Rosen argues, is the rise of "ego-casting" the thoroughly individual and extremely narrow pursuit of one's personal taste. TiVo's, iPods, and narrowcast content of all sorts allow us to construct our own cultural narrative. And that, she says, is a bad thing:

By giving us the illusion of perfect control, these technologies risk making us incapable of ever being surprised. They encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish. In thrall to our own little technologically constructed worlds, we are, ironically, finding it increasingly difficult to appreciate genuine individuality."



READ THIS BOOK! It is an enlightening, fascinating, challenging yet understandable, scary read. Don't take my word for it though, find out for yourself and argue with me about it. Ben Cameron suggested it and I am very glad I read it. Still coming with the last Blog about Lincoln Center ( Ben Cameron notes)

Here's hoping for a better future.