The Change That Already Happened

I'm thinking about the accidental changes this blog has gone through. Last year I was going to write about stuff my friend told me about open source software. Now I'm itching to talk about music downloading. And yeah, that might seem like a shift. But all the stuff that got me excited about open source software was exciting because it clearly applied to things beyond software. And it's not like the rest of the world of culture and commerce needs open source software to show it the way. Napster probably would have happened without Linux, thanks. But all this stuff is kind of happening at the same time. And open source software is kind of giving us a language, and giving the idea of sharing a legitmacy that maybe would have taken a bit more labor to wrap our heads around without it. Thanks, open source software! But open source software, you're no longer the focus of this blog. For real, I'll write about open source software every once in a while. But I think a lot of the principles surrounding open source software have already been internalized. Wait. Maybe I can't take for granted that everybody "gets" open source software. And there definitely are lots of parties fighting it... either out of fear or self-interest. But you can't take away the fact that it's totally changing models and behaviors of "old school" software peeps.

The same can't be said for other economies. Despite the fact that people have totally new ways of producing, finding, buying, and selling other kinds of creative stuff they make (books, movies, music, photos, drugs... u-name-it), old school players can barely be bothered to participate in new ways. They do kinda sign on when somebody else does all the legwork (iTunes, Amazon), but overall, they seem to focus on fighting, suing, and lobbying for things to change as little as possible, all under the pretext of helping the artist! I take that back. They often do wants things to change. They want more things than ever to be illegal. But let's get back to the artist. The creator. The maker of stuff. Whatever you wanna call him/her. This dude really needs to step away from their old school guardian ASAP, my friend! And this dude needs to be happy about it. There are more ways than ever to distribute his work. And there are more ways than ever for somebody else to buy/ consume his work. And there are more ways than ever for people to find his work.

This blog will now be focused on emerging ways of creating, selling, distributing, buying, finding, and consuming stuff. Mostly creative stuff. Keywords riff: self-publishing, Creative Commons, sharing, Free Culture, piracy, the Long Tail, mp3, ebook, free.

What's the point? I don't know all the way yet. I think I'm taking notes. I'm an OK note-taker. But there are incredible note-takers out there. Before you even bother with this blog... if you're not-totally-economically-creative-marketplace-literate, you may want to check out a really illuminating article in Wired magazine,The Long Tail. It's about how people's niche interests in a buncha creative stuff (like movies, music, books, mostly), have been surfaced by a marketplace which is not constrained by physical space.