Essay: How the Internet has changed cultural production

This is a piece of my academic summary of Astra Taylor’s book, The People’s Platform, Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age.

In Chapter two, “For Love or Money,” Astra Taylor discusses the economic imbalance of cultural production in the digital age. In this chapter the techno-skeptics believe the old business motto of cultural production is the answer, but Taylor spends almost all of her debate against the techno-optimists. They endorse our new “amateur paradise,” where anyone can “participate in cultural production for the pleasure of it” (45). This isn’t something Taylor is in total disagreement with because it does give more people the opportunity to express their creativity (45). People can make creative seven second videos on their phones that go viral without having to be hired through a film studio with a production team. The cost of creating and spreading new art is practically none, which to techno-optimists is culture liberation from old monopolistic companies giving the amateur a chance against the professional. But this free culture doesn’t work for the complex creative labor of professionals. Despite new technology, arts such as producing a play or conducting an orchestra still take a lot of people, time, talent, and money to produce. This overlooked difference between the amateur and the professional causes Taylor to have an issue with the amateur paradise. We are facing an economic “cost disease” for “labor-intensive creative productions;” in example, the demand to buy a novel is falling since we can now find a free copy of the book on the Internet (43). Techno-optimists who view all content on an equal level think this free culture is “adequate for democracy,” but Taylor says, “Creativity is invoked time and again to justify low ages and job security.” (66 and 59) She believes that they are ignoring the professional work of complex creative labor and promoting society to think that artists don’t need to be compensated. Techno-optimists don’t think the industry needs to make a profit to have cultural production because art is done for love of it, and that artists are intrinsically motivated enough to create “even if they are operating at a loss” (47). But Taylor contends that this ‘liberation’ of culture will cause a loss of originality, quality, and art that people ought to see. She wrote, “over the intervening years we have somehow deceived ourselves into believing that this state of insecurity and inequality is a form of liberation” (67). She wants people to be aware of this market inequality before we cause professional artists to dissipate. The change Taylor wants to see is the reinvention of the old art industries, “to make them more democratic, accountable, inclusive, and just” (56). She hopes society doesn’t further fall into thinking that art should be free and thinks if this kind of change isn’t made, then the Internet will flatten creativity to one level. And even worse, she fears all jobs are threated if we are continuingly deceived to expect to work for the love of it.