Participatory Media and the future Culture Industry

UDC 2009 Buffalo/Niagara
Aftermath and Renewal: Reclaiming the Critical Ideal

Economic Crisis and Creative Labor - Critical Responses and Strategies
Friday, May 29th

Jane Pirone
Director, BFA Communication Design & Technology
Assistant Professor, School of Art, Media, & Technology
Parsons The New School for Design
http://cdt.parsons.edu
email: pironej[at]newschool[dot]edu
flickr: niftypics
website: www.notfortourists.com

REMIX culture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA -- Kutiman-Thru-you - 01 - Mother of All Funk Chords
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhlHUTBgAMw -- Read my lips by: Atmo - social commentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFE2CCfAP1o -- Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett (Andrew Filippone jr)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6gPSSYxex0 -- The letter U and the numeral 2
http://gawker.com/5146771/ap-bullies-shepard-fairey-over-obama-poster -- Shepard Fairey
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2009/tc20090521_159692.htm -- Copyright Meets a New Foe: The Real-Time Web

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/01/dont_quit_your_.html

Lawrence Lessig
http://www.lessig.org/
http://fora.tv/2009/02/26/Remix_Steven_Johnson_Lawrence_Lessig_and_Shepard_Fairey#

Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/about/history
License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Center for Social Media -- Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/fair_use_in_online_video/

Freelancers Union
http://www.freelancersunion.org/

EFF - Electronic Freedom Foundation
http://www.eff.org/issues/bloggers

You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/partners
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc20090423_318797.htm http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/04/earlyshow/contributors/tracysmith/main1864812_page2.shtml

eventhough I'm focusing on You Tube today, there are MANY other examples of companies that use a user-generated content model and open software API and have similar corporate and revenue model characteristics including but not limited to: Flickr, Twitter, Google (owners of YouTube, has gotten huge off "search", owns blogger), ebay (owns paypal & skype - bought for 2.6 billion in 2005), Yelp, Facebook, MySpace (owned by NewsCorp - bought for $580million in 2005), Technorati, amazon (yup, don't forget that kindle), itunes (podcasts)
here's a blog post with some more recent usage stats: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/01/11/a-collection-of-soical-network-stats-for-2009/
of course there are examples of enterprises that create common good and social benefit in leiu of profit making as their motivation, including but not limited to: wikipedia, archive.org, linux, apache, mySQL, php

Crowdsourcing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing

Jeff Howe -
Crowdsourcing: A Definition

The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/join-the-crowd-why-do-multinationals-use-amateurs-to-solve-scientific-and-technical-problems-915658.html -- excellent overview of threadless, converse, and Pew research, by Jeff Howe, author of the book Crowdsourcing and the blog http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com/cs/advertising/ ..."Right now Holotof has one client offering $600 prize for ideas"..."shows that "best practice" in this regard is combined of a hybrid of professionals and amateurs."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFJfq7nJN-U -- Spec Converse Commercial. this got it started in 1994 through an agency (BSS&P)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip1jbGCulBo -- Doritos: Mouse Trap - Super Bowl XLII Ad. But, now, FritoLay has bypassed even the agency and has simply used Yahoo to solicit the user-generated spots. The pay-off, the winning spot aired during the SuperBowl

but really, are these just young, emerging professionals that are getting exposure? and the company getting what it needs for a very low cost?

http://www.threadless.com/ - if your design "wins" you get $2,000 in cash, $500 Threadless Gift Certificate (can be redeemed for $200 cash), $500 in cash each time your design is reprinted, Up to $22,500 more if you win a "Bestee" in the Threadless Awards

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html?pg=1
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2006-09-14-frito-lay-ad-usat_x.htm

http://www.no-spec.com/
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/position-spec-work

Jeff Howe post on Wired.com - "Customers post creative briefs directly to the community, which then competes to create a design that best fits the clients’ needs. A typical "assignment" will draw dozens of submissions. The winner receives a nominal fee (as little as $200), and the client receives a logo or website design at a fraction of what a professional agency might charge. The losers get zip, which goes a long way to explaining why working on spec ("on speculation," or without guarantee of payment) has always been considered the work of last resort for writers, designers and other creative professionals.

So one might expect crowdSpring and 99designs to wither away like so many other seemingly ill-conceived Web 2.0 startups. Instead, they seem to be flourishing. 99designs says it has paid out over $4 million to its community of 30,000 artists, and crowdSpring expects to be profitable by next year."

Of course, what this does is make design (creative production) like a game of lotto or reality game show. Either each of the 30,000 artists receive 1.33 or a few make a bundle, but the possibility of many making a reasonable living wage that actually covers things like health insurance, unemployment, disability, medicare, social security, a retirement plan, etc. is becoming less available.

Rev Shares, Partnerships, affiliate programs:

https://www.google.com/adsense/static/en_US/PublisherTools.html?sourceid=aso&subid=ww-en-et-storefrontEN_v2_PubSolLink&medium=link -- google has more than just adsense and adwords.

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/ - apple takes a 30% cut off all iphone apps sold on itunes

Other references and resources:

Super series of video on the economics of open content by Terry Fisher and others
http://forum.wgbh.org/node/301 -- cultural convergence and the rise of the amateur

Hal Varian
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/

Lev Manovich
http://www.manovich.net/

Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/

Pew Charitable Trust
http://people-press.org/
http://pewresearch.org/

Yochai Benkler
http://www.benkler.org/

Henry Jenkins
http://www.henryjenkins.org/

ARS Electronica - A new cultural Economy
http://www.aec.at/publications_en.php

Cory Doctorow
http://craphound.com/
http://www.boingboing.net/

John Perry Barlow
http://homes.eff.org/~barlow/

Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams
http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/