Perhaps it impacts memory and patterns of remembrance. Our appreciation of creativity and its purpose might also be changing.
Memory and Collective Reflection
Surely the most striking aspect of the new web is the degree to which it is given over to memory. Sites like StashSpace.com (geared for converting old videos into digital memories), flickr, new digital memory functions in Windows Vista and flock, Nokia’s LifeBlog software, and blogs.
If we look at the single biggest achievement of technology (it may not be the most significant – we’re talking sheer size) it is memory. Some organisations already operate terabyte memory banks. And the Internet is supported by a vast network of memory aids: storage, search engines, social networks and social book marking.
We seem also to be engulfed by a wave we’ve created, individually. All that memory is ours, at least a lot of it. We’re not talking about vast historical archives. We’re talking the last five years of gunk. Of course, there’s room for skepticism.
First, is memory so important? Isn’t the single most striking wave on the web the music download? Here is an opposing view: “Today iTunes makes only a slim profit, and its rivals are awash with red ink. Napster is seeking a buyer, and even with its backhaul business, Nokia’s new Loudeye acquisition - the basis for Recommenders - lost $3.5m on revenue of $5.4m in its most recent quarter.” Andrew Orlowski in The Register, Sept 27 2006.
Yes, there’s plenty going on in music but on the hardware side. One of the peculiarities of a world with dispersed forms of information is that solid rumour stacks of fast. You’d be forgiven for walking around with the impression that everybody is downloading and often.
But isn’t MySpace more important even than downloads. At a recent conference in Amsterdam Marc Canter and Craig Newmark agreed: MySpace is about music. It is huge but so too are, still, the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Green Day, U2 and Simply Red. In other words in music it is not unusual to see the herd collect.
The web, ably assisted by the hard-disk, comes down to memory. That is its unusual manifestation, the way it provides facilities for us all to place a part of our lives in archive, often for all to see, and releases us further from the constraints on time placed by needing to remember.
Creativity
The status of creativity in the new web world is extraordinary. Creativity is liberated, no question. Whether people are using digital cameras, creating short videos and animated clips or blogs, or mash ups, the rapid development of user generated content sites is evidence of a significant shift in the process of expression.
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