How the inventive tech revolution failed
"I'm an auto worker. I'm a steel man. I'm just another person in the history of the world where their industry has become archaic and it's gone."
This is a quote from musician Kim Deal – she of the Pixies and Breeders. It comes from one of around 140 interviews with creative people, including musicians, visual artists, writers and creators of film and television, in a recent book by the critic William Deresiewicz. The Artist's Death: How Creators Struggle to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech explores the impact of the digital revolution on the creative industries and how the promise of a creative revolution has proven to be a downright mixed blessing. It makes for quite a depressing read.
Deresiewicz claims there are two narratives about the impact of the technical revolution on the lives of artists (by which he means anyone engaged in creative practice). The first story as told by Big Tech and its evangelists is that there has never been a better time to be an artist. The old gatekeepers (record labels, publishers, etc.) have been pushed aside so that anyone with the urge to create can reach a global audience. Creative software and hardware have massively reduced production costs, while social media and the internet allow free worldwide distribution. We can all be artists now.
Of course we can all be artists as long as we don't expect that we can make a living from it
The other narrative, while accepting the undisputed advantages of cheaper tools and processes and the opportunities digital distribution offers, describes a world where the same forces are destroying the value of art and the means by which it was possible to make a career have a professional creative. Of course we can all be artists as long as we don't expect that we can make a living from it. And when quality is important to us, that's a problem for all of us.