[iDC] Article on Gatekeepers

[Hugemusic]

Thanks Barry.

This is fascinating thinking.  I'm examining ways independent musos can promote their music via the media ecology - particularly MySpace and other such ventures - and a journalist by training. As you point out, there are many avenues for promotion to occur but, especially once the unwelcome messages start to dominate (spam in its many and varied forms), the gates close and this becomes less effective. I'm examining this phenomenon first-hand this month - trying to promote my survey's URL to independent musos  :-).

What I'm wondering about, though, which your paper doesn't get into, is the relationship between first-party and third-party gatekeeping. In other words, the ways in which people "out-source" their gatekeeping functions to eg spam blockers, radio show hosts, and so on. I'm particularly interested right now because I'm reading "The future of music" by Kusek and Leonhard (http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/), which futurises the "music like water" thesis, in which people allow personalised technological agents to perform the gatekeeping role and provide them with ubiqitous, gratifying, music.

Now, to my way of thinking, that's a techno-utopian prospect with which there are many difficulties, and your paper has raised a lot more issues in my head.  Not least of these runs parallel to the "Daily me" thesis developed in Cass Sunstein's Republic.com (http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7014.html), which has an e-democratic, public sphere take on the same kind of automated "filtering", to use Chris Anderson's (http://www.thelongtail.com/) term for the same thing. 

How can this be reconciled? Is the cost of gatekeeping/filtering the price of increased freedom to choose?  Must it be borne by the individual (antivirus software) or can it be shared among the community (anti-spam prosecutions)? Can it be outsourced and is there a profit to be made in building filters? At what level(s) are the filters most effective? Are some of these filters (eg compliance with the "safe harbour" provisions of the DMCA) unwanted but unavoidable as far as the individual goes?  Is this really any different in essence from the current regime of journos-as-gatekeepers?

And most importantly, will the need for filters (or involuntary enforcement of them) mean that the result of increased choice becomes, perversely, a new self-declared limitation on diversity? Or range of limitations?

WDYR???  Anyone??

Cheers,
Hughie



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Barry Blesser 
  To: Institute for Distributed Creativity 
  Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 2:07 PM
  Subject: [iDC] Article on Gatekeepers


  I write a column for one of the radio broadcast industry's magazines, Radio World Extra, but in reading the idc postings, I realized that the basic principles of that article apply far more broadly that the specific case that I discussed. I am taking the liberty of distributing that article to see if it produces any resonance. 

  The basic theme is simple. The same electronic Internet technology that allows for efficient distribution of information (now in surplus) produce a gatekeeper that each individual erects to control the message density (head space scarcity). 

  Regards,
  Barry


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