Hi Josh, thanks for this thoughtful comment. Lots to think about here. I would say that my sense of the differentiations between pirate and college radio here are likely colored the distinctions I observed in my own home town of Santa Cruz. To (admittedly) generalize, the college station seemed to focus more on serving the student population than the pirate station, which endeavored to serve the entire population. There was certainly overlap, but my impression was that they served (and gave voice to) two discrete constituencies. Also, while Democracy Now is indeed broadcast over many licensed stations, in Santa Cruz it is actually broadcast on the pirate radio station.
I love your statement that pirate broadcasting is a completely reasonable reaction to a FCC licensing system that has grown out of control. And the commonalities that you draw between pirate radio and college radio are well taken--I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find a fair amount of overlap between the college radio and pirate radio staffs in many towns. They do share much more than they differ.
Thanks, Kelly (and Corbyn) for articulating so clearly what I have always believed, even before my job was outsourced by millionaire religious healthcare executives in February, which is that we have incredible disparities in wealth that are unjust, that go way beyond some people excelling and "earning" more than others, and that we need more sharing. I live in a Midwest neighborhood where I've proposed sharing but because I'm unemployed and relatively new back (to childhood home), I'm not listened to. It's hard to read about Boston, or Santa Monica (where I've lived), or NYC (same) and how sharing is going on there, because I miss the more open, caring society in other places I've lived. But I'll keep trying - I've decided to sign up for a volunteer position (I would spend 85% of my time volunteering, but retired husband doesn't want me to "give away for free" my work, except he likes this literacy thing I'm beginning) and hope that that leads to more sharing and expands horizons (I will be helping a foreign student, and have always had luck with people not from my own place).
Thanks for this fine article. I agree wholeheartedly with the general sentiment, and in particular about the importance of this popularly accessible, easily developed, non-digital wireless technology.
As a longtime community/college radio broadcaster, I will also go out on a limb and say that generally speaking college and good pirate radio are not so far apart, and that the differentiations you're setting up don't quite hold.
For example -- Democracy Now! is not a pirate radio phenomenon. It's all over the licensed broadcast spectrum, all over the world, on more than 800 radio and TV stations, and only some of them, but not by any means all, happen to pirate.
Regarding cultural risk-taking, I will also assert that pirate radio in general is not so different from community/college-radio broadcasts.
It depends on how much latitude the college radio-station volunteers have in determining their own broadcast practices, and in developing a programmatic focus station-wide on cultural innovation.
But, generally speaking, college and small independent radio -- such as KALX, KUSF, KFJC or WFMU -- are at the pinnacle of performance for community-driven, underground radio that's still "legit" in that they actually have broadcast licenses. They routinely take all the creative risks your article attributes to pirate radio, and also aspire (but don't always achieve) a degree more composure, clarity and focus in their on-air manner.
It's also worth noting that some college/community radio stations -- for example, WXPN or KCRW -- are not at all close to the ground, they're more aspirational as 'alt-NPR' stations, and as such skim the surface of the truly underground/emerging music community to act as an "intake" system for music and culture that slot easily into more mainstream channels.
Thus the importance of truly underground radio, be it college, community or "pirate" (i.e. unlicensed), to provide the real alternatives to such mainstream-trending institutions.
The most important issue is in fact that of "latitude" -- how much freedom does the broadcaster have? And how responsibly do they use that freedom?
Both "Freedom" and "Responsibility" are loaded words, so I'll leave that to your interpretation.
But the rubber meets the road when the broadcaster has to deal with issues of "freedom" and "responsibility" in real time.
It is when that freedom is taken away that pirate radio's true moment of glory arrives.
While pirate radio can definitely match independent college/community radio in terms of creative adventurousness and even "professionalism" behind the mic -- I feel, in my own experience, that the real significance of pirate radio is the ultimately democratic imperative of simply flipping the bird to the people who control the outlets, and starting one's own.
The ultimate issue is state control of public resources; the FCC regulates (or should, anyway) the broadcast spectrum as a public resource held in trust.
Yet, for reasons we're all aware of, the licensing process, especially for local broadcasting, is oppressive and undemocratic.
Pirate broadcasting is an altogether reasonable reaction to this, and should be as easy as setting up a website. It is, in fact, barring the legal barriers to entry.
Beyond that, a good pirate radio station is generally as good as a good college or community radio station, and generally as bad as a good community or college radio station that's off its game.
It's the freedom and possibility, and what one DOES with that freedom and possibility, regardless of whether one's a pirate or a licensed community broadcaster, that makes the difference.
New York City's Mayor Bloomberg was humble enough to get Mayor Penalosa as Consultant. He admits openly that the US definitely has much to learn from the Bogota experience (and perhaps much to unlearn, while the US is at it!).
I actually shared a cab with someone the last time I was in NYC. Myself and another female my age (20s) took the cab from La Guardia to the middle of Manhattan. I didn't want to pay the full cab fare to go the the Times Square area so I asked someone who looked friendly. :-) She got dropped off near 36th/3rd and I got off in the TS area. She gave me $15 and the total was like $35. not too shabby! I think it's a great initiative. so I think in future we should expect more sharing.
how about this year? what are we to expect?;) this practice is being wider spread and more and more people get involved in sharing. that makes me think that we should expect more every year.
@Adam Funny you mention Star Wars--as I was writing this piece, I kept returning to the ARG's that were popular for genre TV shows earlier in the decade, such as The Lost Experience, which expanded the show's narrative into the online world of the viewers. The difference being--at least in these cases--that the viewers were rarely equal participants, instead they were interacting with already-written online content. I think there's a certain generational fluency with this sort of experience--while I did not get into Star Wars as a child, and instead was obsessed with the Transformers, I experienced that narrative in a way that resembles transmedia fiction to a degree. Certainly, through the cartoon, but also through comics, movies, and the toys, with which my friends and I would create our own stories that built upon or at times outright contradicted the "canon" that had been established in the official texts.
@Allison Some really compelling questions there. Is it the genre itself, or merely the way we've been conditioned to consume certain genres? That's a pretty tantalizing question.
I hope the IRS is willing to take payment in soup. Seriously, though, I've wondered about how it works if you are in a "soup enterprise" situation. Let's say I've figured out how to barter for everything I need. The IRS is, in some situations, going to say I owe taxes on some of that. But if I'm bartering for everything I need, there's no money to pay taxes with (and indeed, if it were me, taking money out of the equation would be the point). What do they do at that point? Fine you (and take payment in time bucks)? Jail you (hey, it's still room and board, plus probably a free education)?
What's even more frustrating is that farms that host WWOOFers (http://www.wwoof.org/) have sometimes been fined heavily by state departments of labor for violating wage and hour laws (under the law, the so-called "volunteers" should technically be treated as employees). Our labor laws haven't caught up with the fact that farming is not just a business activity, it is often something we get involved in for fun, learning, recreation, relaxation, socializing...and a little free food! The new Crop Mob (http://www.cropmob.org) phenomenon proves that people really do just like to get outdoors and get dirty! It would be great if our departments of labor could tell the difference between the dirt and veggie enthusiasts, and the millions of low-wage farm workers who truly need the protection of our laws.
Let's see the IRS go after all of the WWOOFers and farms out there engaged in barter! How frustrating that, even when groups of people find ways to function outside the system in order to survive/thrive, the system still wants a piece of the pie.
So many things are so much easier to "undo and redo" these days; I think it's significant. We do something fourteen times, FAST, when we would have done it once but more carefully. I think a lot of car wrecks come from too much practice being able to say "game over -- begin again!"
It would be nice to have sch third places in the area, but with so many social connections being made online, it could be that a third place is created in a virtual setting.
I've started thinking in terms of 'how much is enough' rather than 'how much is too much' because it's a more honest barometer. As nice as it is to have matching appliances and such, it's often not necessary. Just another mental shift in the consumerist paradigm.
I really enjoy reading your blog, Corbyn. Although I am a nurse, I have been employed only 25% of the last 2 years (due to the type of nursing I do, arthritis and other factors.) Due to my previous years of frugality it has not been too bad for us. The years before my frugality were marred by an ex who spent everything. And I thank the Universe every day that my daughter has a college scholarship.
It is so hard for me to rectify life and money being so inexplicably tied together. I have a great fondness for making gifts, spending time hanging out with family and friends, spending time at the library and walking where I can. But I have the money guzzling all-American car, and do not live in a mass-transit or bike friendly area. And of course there are the Midwest winters. But everyone around me does not share my love for all things frugal.
As for your health issues, I am glad they were not as bad as they could have been. I love your dyed pink hair! So clever and such a statement to Cancer: Here I am, come get me if you dare. I have health insurance for my daughter but not myself. I too have two holes on my mouth from extractions rather than expensive dental work. I rely on lots of cheap ibuprofen and tums to get me through the arthritis and the GERD. Such are the sacrifices we make.
Thanks so much for sharing your life with us. Your writing is lovely. I enjoy hearing about your life, although I am sure it is painful for you at times. You are truly special.
Really what's needed is the second half of a paradigm shift for users, which involves a lot of education of the cost of creating work.
The problem is really that most people have never had the chance to think through how one actually can make a living in a creative field... The average consumer hasn't commissioned a lot of artwork on their own. It's a lot harder than it seems, and costs more than people expect...
When the internet rolled around, people got really excited about the idea of free content, because the costs of distribution were removed. But at some point, we need to think about the fact that we still want people out there to be making awesome new stuff for us to share... and that's where investing directly in the creation of the work has the potential to be revolutionary.
I think that artists need to be a lot clearer about figuring out what their work costs them, and educating their audiences about that. Artists have a tendency to shun talks of money, and devalue their work by self-funding so much of it (through both day jobs and unpaid hours) without clarity about these investments. It's easy for us to end up operating like really mis-managed non-profits in unsustainable ways that lead to burn-out.
For example, I'm a photographer and do a lot of sliding-scale and pro-bono work that I share freely with communities that I want to support. But when I do this, people who appreciate the images tend to think of photography as "free" and "instant" - whereas I know that my business invests at least a few hundred bucks in a basic shoot. This makes it a challenge in doing this kind of work, and the financial support that I receive from the community has yet to make much of a dent in these costs- it's still very much supported by commercial work.
Still, I think that it's important to try and derive support from our audiences and communities. It's still a bit of a dream in many cases, but it's an important part in re-setting our cultural priorities. Money isn't good or evil, it's just a stand-in for value. If we value our work, we should be paid for it- and if we want to share our creative work freely with our communities, we should offer them the opportunity to share in the costs of creating it.
This reminds me that the Ainsworth Collective in Portland, which has create their own neighborhood scale economy, was incubated in a series of potlucks:
The web has made it far easier for artists to reach fans, and opened up new ways to bypass the traditional music-industry business model. On the other hand, there are a lot of artists out there. Getting money into the hands of artists "the kickstarter way" may help ensure that the buzzworthy prevail, while the majority of those artists are starving, just like the good old days.
Testimonial: I've bought lots of music online, and love hearing new artists via websites, but have never donated to projects that have yet to materialize. Not even with the possibility of paying to get Paul to record "Glory of Love" in the studio (on the other hand, if he sang a few bars on my answering machine, I might loosen the purse-strings).
I don't know how long it takes before we find out if a donation-driven economy is "sustainable," but I just gave our donut money to some wet Pakistanis, and they don't even have a MySpace page...
Some notes from someone more inside the RepRap community on these excellent questions!
1: Sustainability of the plastics
Recycling is a high priority for the community, and while most solutions we have developed so far are clanky and limited, improvements are continuing and perhaps more to the point, ABS is quite amenable to more traditional recycling.
Second, the RepRap user base has also embraced PLA (polylactic acid), which is made from corn. Oil-based plastics are fine as long as recycling is in the mix, and as long as alternatives are being worked on. I think it's right to be more concerned about burning oil than about spinning it into materials. (Although in the long term, neither can go on forever.)
2: Weaponized Fabrication
Like with most technologies, this one is probably inevitable, although I find it interesting and heartening that the RepRap guys are actively opposed to it and have at least mentioned actively subverting attempts to weaponize.
3: Are Factories Everywhere a Good Thing?
They can be, I think. Building a factory does concentrate the environmental impact of construction into a single point, which can be watched and protected against spills, etc. However having the factories out at the nodes of consumption does eliminate a lot of transportation cost. And as recycling improves, the factory nodes will tend to be less polluting...
One:
Donation economies need Generous Nodes, which is to say nodes which give away more money than they accept. This would seem to make it impossible for a donation economy to survive at all, but a healthy donation economy (for any discipline) will have a lot of novices and amateurs, in fact many more than it has actual pros. Donation economies, in fact, need day jobs, which is not very Utopian but it works, and has done, for some time. (Kickstart incidentally is not a donation system at all but a conditional purchase system.)
Two:
Record Labels are polymorphic now. Yes, a lot of artists play the often-agony-wrought game of self-promotion, self-publication and self-management, but they don't have to, there are a LOT of options. Witness DFTBA Records, to name one, a record label which consists /entirely of YouTube artists,/ including the founders and owners, and which does alright both with donations and conventional record sales. Record labels occur in many sizes these days (as opposed to one, huge) which is a great benefit to artists.
In my singing the praises of the new internet age, I try to be realistic, and surely for every new way artists find to make a paycheck off the web someone else will be trying to screw them, but I think this new, bigger, more chaotic system is ultimately a good thing.
Great insights here, Paul. I can see your whole concern with the Kickstarter (Invest in a project before it's done) paradigm and I agree with you that this can't replace more traditional methods of funding. Also, the kickstarter presentations are so slick I begin to wonder what kind of budget went into creating them.
My main worry is all the artists who feel convinced that they must give so much away for free in order to promote their work. My site, goldhat.org, hopes to solve this problem by giving patrons a way to donate $0.10 to $100+ on content that they believe worthwhile.
I really appreciate this article because it gives me a lot to think about. I'm thinking that goldhat.org will have a different demographic than kickstarter, but right now the picture is fuzzy.
You know what came to me as I read this? Star Wars. It's really the ultimate in transmedia creations--there are the movies and various TV spin offs like The Clone Wars, but also the many, many books, the video games, and probably a dozen other things. But then there's the toys. We think of them as pure merchandizing, but when you think about it, it's also a way for kids to intervene in the Star Wars narrative--they invent new situations and conflicts and stories for the characters and run these scenarios, and I think for a lot of kids that flows right into the master narrative; my own son can hardly tell the difference between what he's imagined for Han and Luke and what's in the movies themselves. So from that perspective, Star Wars was at the avant garde and literature is just catching up, exploring this idea of telling stories on multiple platforms and creating opportunities for fan intervention.
What a great dialog around this piece! Glad to see so many responding so thoughtfully.
My wife, who is involved in the theater, raised another good point: donations are a giant part of the theater world, as ticket sales do little more than keep the lights on. However, any established theater, such as Steppenwolf, has a team of professional development staff whose entire job is to solicit endowments and donations, which keep the organization going.
As solo and DIY artists, we do not have the resourses or infrastructure to court large, sustained endowments. Perhaps that could be a service that Kickstarter offers in the future?
In Gabe's case, the amount of goodwill that came after he was hassled by the Chicago park service brought in an unprecedented amount of support, but that was one unique and rare incidence--it's rare that a small DIY project makes its way to the front page of the New Yorker blog. A lot of things here to consider.
Hi Josh, thanks for this thoughtful comment. Lots to think about here. I would say that my sense of the differentiations between pirate and college radio here are likely colored the distinctions I observed in my own home town of Santa Cruz. To (admittedly) generalize, the college station seemed to focus more on serving the student population than the pirate station, which endeavored to serve the entire population. There was certainly overlap, but my impression was that they served (and gave voice to) two discrete constituencies. Also, while Democracy Now is indeed broadcast over many licensed stations, in Santa Cruz it is actually broadcast on the pirate radio station.
I love your statement that pirate broadcasting is a completely reasonable reaction to a FCC licensing system that has grown out of control. And the commonalities that you draw between pirate radio and college radio are well taken--I certainly wouldn't be surprised to find a fair amount of overlap between the college radio and pirate radio staffs in many towns. They do share much more than they differ.
Thanks, Kelly (and Corbyn) for articulating so clearly what I have always believed, even before my job was outsourced by millionaire religious healthcare executives in February, which is that we have incredible disparities in wealth that are unjust, that go way beyond some people excelling and "earning" more than others, and that we need more sharing. I live in a Midwest neighborhood where I've proposed sharing but because I'm unemployed and relatively new back (to childhood home), I'm not listened to. It's hard to read about Boston, or Santa Monica (where I've lived), or NYC (same) and how sharing is going on there, because I miss the more open, caring society in other places I've lived. But I'll keep trying - I've decided to sign up for a volunteer position (I would spend 85% of my time volunteering, but retired husband doesn't want me to "give away for free" my work, except he likes this literacy thing I'm beginning) and hope that that leads to more sharing and expands horizons (I will be helping a foreign student, and have always had luck with people not from my own place).
Thanks for this fine article. I agree wholeheartedly with the general sentiment, and in particular about the importance of this popularly accessible, easily developed, non-digital wireless technology.
As a longtime community/college radio broadcaster, I will also go out on a limb and say that generally speaking college and good pirate radio are not so far apart, and that the differentiations you're setting up don't quite hold.
For example -- Democracy Now! is not a pirate radio phenomenon. It's all over the licensed broadcast spectrum, all over the world, on more than 800 radio and TV stations, and only some of them, but not by any means all, happen to pirate.
Regarding cultural risk-taking, I will also assert that pirate radio in general is not so different from community/college-radio broadcasts.
It depends on how much latitude the college radio-station volunteers have in determining their own broadcast practices, and in developing a programmatic focus station-wide on cultural innovation.
But, generally speaking, college and small independent radio -- such as KALX, KUSF, KFJC or WFMU -- are at the pinnacle of performance for community-driven, underground radio that's still "legit" in that they actually have broadcast licenses. They routinely take all the creative risks your article attributes to pirate radio, and also aspire (but don't always achieve) a degree more composure, clarity and focus in their on-air manner.
It's also worth noting that some college/community radio stations -- for example, WXPN or KCRW -- are not at all close to the ground, they're more aspirational as 'alt-NPR' stations, and as such skim the surface of the truly underground/emerging music community to act as an "intake" system for music and culture that slot easily into more mainstream channels.
Thus the importance of truly underground radio, be it college, community or "pirate" (i.e. unlicensed), to provide the real alternatives to such mainstream-trending institutions.
The most important issue is in fact that of "latitude" -- how much freedom does the broadcaster have? And how responsibly do they use that freedom?
Both "Freedom" and "Responsibility" are loaded words, so I'll leave that to your interpretation.
But the rubber meets the road when the broadcaster has to deal with issues of "freedom" and "responsibility" in real time.
It is when that freedom is taken away that pirate radio's true moment of glory arrives.
While pirate radio can definitely match independent college/community radio in terms of creative adventurousness and even "professionalism" behind the mic -- I feel, in my own experience, that the real significance of pirate radio is the ultimately democratic imperative of simply flipping the bird to the people who control the outlets, and starting one's own.
The ultimate issue is state control of public resources; the FCC regulates (or should, anyway) the broadcast spectrum as a public resource held in trust.
Yet, for reasons we're all aware of, the licensing process, especially for local broadcasting, is oppressive and undemocratic.
Pirate broadcasting is an altogether reasonable reaction to this, and should be as easy as setting up a website. It is, in fact, barring the legal barriers to entry.
Beyond that, a good pirate radio station is generally as good as a good college or community radio station, and generally as bad as a good community or college radio station that's off its game.
It's the freedom and possibility, and what one DOES with that freedom and possibility, regardless of whether one's a pirate or a licensed community broadcaster, that makes the difference.
New York City's Mayor Bloomberg was humble enough to get Mayor Penalosa as Consultant. He admits openly that the US definitely has much to learn from the Bogota experience (and perhaps much to unlearn, while the US is at it!).
I've posted another perspective on this project over at Core77:
http://www.core77.com/blog/featured_items/politics_please_were_social_de...
Cameron
Really inspiring and awesome post.
I actually shared a cab with someone the last time I was in NYC. Myself and another female my age (20s) took the cab from La Guardia to the middle of Manhattan. I didn't want to pay the full cab fare to go the the Times Square area so I asked someone who looked friendly. :-) She got dropped off near 36th/3rd and I got off in the TS area. She gave me $15 and the total was like $35. not too shabby! I think it's a great initiative. so I think in future we should expect more sharing.
how about this year? what are we to expect?;) this practice is being wider spread and more and more people get involved in sharing. that makes me think that we should expect more every year.
interesting article
@Adam Funny you mention Star Wars--as I was writing this piece, I kept returning to the ARG's that were popular for genre TV shows earlier in the decade, such as The Lost Experience, which expanded the show's narrative into the online world of the viewers. The difference being--at least in these cases--that the viewers were rarely equal participants, instead they were interacting with already-written online content. I think there's a certain generational fluency with this sort of experience--while I did not get into Star Wars as a child, and instead was obsessed with the Transformers, I experienced that narrative in a way that resembles transmedia fiction to a degree. Certainly, through the cartoon, but also through comics, movies, and the toys, with which my friends and I would create our own stories that built upon or at times outright contradicted the "canon" that had been established in the official texts.
@Allison Some really compelling questions there. Is it the genre itself, or merely the way we've been conditioned to consume certain genres? That's a pretty tantalizing question.
I hope the IRS is willing to take payment in soup. Seriously, though, I've wondered about how it works if you are in a "soup enterprise" situation. Let's say I've figured out how to barter for everything I need. The IRS is, in some situations, going to say I owe taxes on some of that. But if I'm bartering for everything I need, there's no money to pay taxes with (and indeed, if it were me, taking money out of the equation would be the point). What do they do at that point? Fine you (and take payment in time bucks)? Jail you (hey, it's still room and board, plus probably a free education)?
What's even more frustrating is that farms that host WWOOFers (http://www.wwoof.org/) have sometimes been fined heavily by state departments of labor for violating wage and hour laws (under the law, the so-called "volunteers" should technically be treated as employees). Our labor laws haven't caught up with the fact that farming is not just a business activity, it is often something we get involved in for fun, learning, recreation, relaxation, socializing...and a little free food! The new Crop Mob (http://www.cropmob.org) phenomenon proves that people really do just like to get outdoors and get dirty! It would be great if our departments of labor could tell the difference between the dirt and veggie enthusiasts, and the millions of low-wage farm workers who truly need the protection of our laws.
Let's see the IRS go after all of the WWOOFers and farms out there engaged in barter! How frustrating that, even when groups of people find ways to function outside the system in order to survive/thrive, the system still wants a piece of the pie.
So many things are so much easier to "undo and redo" these days; I think it's significant. We do something fourteen times, FAST, when we would have done it once but more carefully. I think a lot of car wrecks come from too much practice being able to say "game over -- begin again!"
It would be nice to have sch third places in the area, but with so many social connections being made online, it could be that a third place is created in a virtual setting.
I've started thinking in terms of 'how much is enough' rather than 'how much is too much' because it's a more honest barometer. As nice as it is to have matching appliances and such, it's often not necessary. Just another mental shift in the consumerist paradigm.
I really enjoy reading your blog, Corbyn. Although I am a nurse, I have been employed only 25% of the last 2 years (due to the type of nursing I do, arthritis and other factors.) Due to my previous years of frugality it has not been too bad for us. The years before my frugality were marred by an ex who spent everything. And I thank the Universe every day that my daughter has a college scholarship.
It is so hard for me to rectify life and money being so inexplicably tied together. I have a great fondness for making gifts, spending time hanging out with family and friends, spending time at the library and walking where I can. But I have the money guzzling all-American car, and do not live in a mass-transit or bike friendly area. And of course there are the Midwest winters. But everyone around me does not share my love for all things frugal.
As for your health issues, I am glad they were not as bad as they could have been. I love your dyed pink hair! So clever and such a statement to Cancer: Here I am, come get me if you dare. I have health insurance for my daughter but not myself. I too have two holes on my mouth from extractions rather than expensive dental work. I rely on lots of cheap ibuprofen and tums to get me through the arthritis and the GERD. Such are the sacrifices we make.
Thanks so much for sharing your life with us. Your writing is lovely. I enjoy hearing about your life, although I am sure it is painful for you at times. You are truly special.
Really what's needed is the second half of a paradigm shift for users, which involves a lot of education of the cost of creating work.
The problem is really that most people have never had the chance to think through how one actually can make a living in a creative field... The average consumer hasn't commissioned a lot of artwork on their own. It's a lot harder than it seems, and costs more than people expect...
When the internet rolled around, people got really excited about the idea of free content, because the costs of distribution were removed. But at some point, we need to think about the fact that we still want people out there to be making awesome new stuff for us to share... and that's where investing directly in the creation of the work has the potential to be revolutionary.
I think that artists need to be a lot clearer about figuring out what their work costs them, and educating their audiences about that. Artists have a tendency to shun talks of money, and devalue their work by self-funding so much of it (through both day jobs and unpaid hours) without clarity about these investments. It's easy for us to end up operating like really mis-managed non-profits in unsustainable ways that lead to burn-out.
For example, I'm a photographer and do a lot of sliding-scale and pro-bono work that I share freely with communities that I want to support. But when I do this, people who appreciate the images tend to think of photography as "free" and "instant" - whereas I know that my business invests at least a few hundred bucks in a basic shoot. This makes it a challenge in doing this kind of work, and the financial support that I receive from the community has yet to make much of a dent in these costs- it's still very much supported by commercial work.
Still, I think that it's important to try and derive support from our audiences and communities. It's still a bit of a dream in many cases, but it's an important part in re-setting our cultural priorities. Money isn't good or evil, it's just a stand-in for value. If we value our work, we should be paid for it- and if we want to share our creative work freely with our communities, we should offer them the opportunity to share in the costs of creating it.
http://www.jjtiziou.net/jj/my-dream
-jj
This reminds me that the Ainsworth Collective in Portland, which has create their own neighborhood scale economy, was incubated in a series of potlucks:
http://shareable.net/blog/wont-you-be-my-neighbor
So if you're committed to organizing your neighborhood, a potluck is a good way to start but you might need a series of them.
You can think of the organizing process in three stages:
-Step 1. connecting people
-Step 2. finding common concern
-Step 3. the group deciding on common action
So a regular potluck is a great way to accomplish step 1.
The web has made it far easier for artists to reach fans, and opened up new ways to bypass the traditional music-industry business model. On the other hand, there are a lot of artists out there. Getting money into the hands of artists "the kickstarter way" may help ensure that the buzzworthy prevail, while the majority of those artists are starving, just like the good old days.
Testimonial: I've bought lots of music online, and love hearing new artists via websites, but have never donated to projects that have yet to materialize. Not even with the possibility of paying to get Paul to record "Glory of Love" in the studio (on the other hand, if he sang a few bars on my answering machine, I might loosen the purse-strings).
I don't know how long it takes before we find out if a donation-driven economy is "sustainable," but I just gave our donut money to some wet Pakistanis, and they don't even have a MySpace page...
Some notes from someone more inside the RepRap community on these excellent questions!
1: Sustainability of the plastics
Recycling is a high priority for the community, and while most solutions we have developed so far are clanky and limited, improvements are continuing and perhaps more to the point, ABS is quite amenable to more traditional recycling.
Second, the RepRap user base has also embraced PLA (polylactic acid), which is made from corn. Oil-based plastics are fine as long as recycling is in the mix, and as long as alternatives are being worked on. I think it's right to be more concerned about burning oil than about spinning it into materials. (Although in the long term, neither can go on forever.)
2: Weaponized Fabrication
Like with most technologies, this one is probably inevitable, although I find it interesting and heartening that the RepRap guys are actively opposed to it and have at least mentioned actively subverting attempts to weaponize.
3: Are Factories Everywhere a Good Thing?
They can be, I think. Building a factory does concentrate the environmental impact of construction into a single point, which can be watched and protected against spills, etc. However having the factories out at the nodes of consumption does eliminate a lot of transportation cost. And as recycling improves, the factory nodes will tend to be less polluting...
Two thoughts on this:
One:
Donation economies need Generous Nodes, which is to say nodes which give away more money than they accept. This would seem to make it impossible for a donation economy to survive at all, but a healthy donation economy (for any discipline) will have a lot of novices and amateurs, in fact many more than it has actual pros. Donation economies, in fact, need day jobs, which is not very Utopian but it works, and has done, for some time. (Kickstart incidentally is not a donation system at all but a conditional purchase system.)
Two:
Record Labels are polymorphic now. Yes, a lot of artists play the often-agony-wrought game of self-promotion, self-publication and self-management, but they don't have to, there are a LOT of options. Witness DFTBA Records, to name one, a record label which consists /entirely of YouTube artists,/ including the founders and owners, and which does alright both with donations and conventional record sales. Record labels occur in many sizes these days (as opposed to one, huge) which is a great benefit to artists.
In my singing the praises of the new internet age, I try to be realistic, and surely for every new way artists find to make a paycheck off the web someone else will be trying to screw them, but I think this new, bigger, more chaotic system is ultimately a good thing.
Great insights here, Paul. I can see your whole concern with the Kickstarter (Invest in a project before it's done) paradigm and I agree with you that this can't replace more traditional methods of funding. Also, the kickstarter presentations are so slick I begin to wonder what kind of budget went into creating them.
My main worry is all the artists who feel convinced that they must give so much away for free in order to promote their work. My site, goldhat.org, hopes to solve this problem by giving patrons a way to donate $0.10 to $100+ on content that they believe worthwhile.
I really appreciate this article because it gives me a lot to think about. I'm thinking that goldhat.org will have a different demographic than kickstarter, but right now the picture is fuzzy.
You know what came to me as I read this? Star Wars. It's really the ultimate in transmedia creations--there are the movies and various TV spin offs like The Clone Wars, but also the many, many books, the video games, and probably a dozen other things. But then there's the toys. We think of them as pure merchandizing, but when you think about it, it's also a way for kids to intervene in the Star Wars narrative--they invent new situations and conflicts and stories for the characters and run these scenarios, and I think for a lot of kids that flows right into the master narrative; my own son can hardly tell the difference between what he's imagined for Han and Luke and what's in the movies themselves. So from that perspective, Star Wars was at the avant garde and literature is just catching up, exploring this idea of telling stories on multiple platforms and creating opportunities for fan intervention.
What a great dialog around this piece! Glad to see so many responding so thoughtfully.
My wife, who is involved in the theater, raised another good point: donations are a giant part of the theater world, as ticket sales do little more than keep the lights on. However, any established theater, such as Steppenwolf, has a team of professional development staff whose entire job is to solicit endowments and donations, which keep the organization going.
As solo and DIY artists, we do not have the resourses or infrastructure to court large, sustained endowments. Perhaps that could be a service that Kickstarter offers in the future?
In Gabe's case, the amount of goodwill that came after he was hassled by the Chicago park service brought in an unprecedented amount of support, but that was one unique and rare incidence--it's rare that a small DIY project makes its way to the front page of the New Yorker blog. A lot of things here to consider.