Joi Ito, venture capitalist, talks on The Open Network.
Synopsis: Joi evangelizes for the power inherent in an open network - open as in not closed to participation and competition. He sees a divide between an old guard and his twist on the "Creative Class". The creative class scrambles to find business models and opportunities in behavioral shifts, trends, technologies rather than fighting change and preserving the status quo. He cites examples of Chinese and Japanese artists making a living by giving some of their product away. And he ends with the rise of the amateur revolution (amateur is a French meaning one that is motivated to do by passion): "Good amateurs are better than crappy professionals."
Joi Ito, The Open Network
Earlier someone mentioned ICANN - ICANN is fixable; and at least it is an open system. [Reference to other large body organization that he's not sure is fixable; btw, Joi is on the board of ICANN.]
Internet was the first open network; open networks are a pillar of democracy.
Before the 'Net, the telephone companies decided amongst themselves the rules of play. Open means it's competitive - anyone can participate and compete; not about who has the most votes [in a committee].
I would call ourselves The Creative Class - I've been kicked around by Richard Florida by my interpretation.
There is more similarity between the creative class across countries - like with Brazil - than within the same country [to non-creative class]. There is a huge gap between the old school guys and new school guys. File sharing is a new behavior. Old school: Instead of trying to make a business out of it, they [instinctly] want to kill it. You don't try to force a behavior change -- you watch for behavior changes and then create a product for it. [[At this point, Joi plays the Pepsi Super Bowl commercial where kids that are "criminals" for filesharing speak.]
MP3 is metadata. The artists make their money in concerts, in endorsements. I've talked to Chinese artists. They said: "What's worse than being ripped off? Not being ripped off." Contrast to in Japan the music is crap because [the industry] it is a big machine.
Don't need to argue for Wikipedia in this audience - take a look at Wikipedia history flow. Average mean time to correct any vandalism is five minutes.
New anime products by same business folks that sold Pokemon for $2. Now finding people will pay $2000 for DVD boxed set [of anime videos that are freely distributed online]. These are the devotees. Trying to get $2000 from 100 fans instead of $2 across 100,000 people. This is a new model.
It's now more about relationships between artists and fans.
Plays Narutrix video.
ccmixter.org - you can put music here under Creative Commons license [from site: "remixes licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want"]; says people have been picked up by labels and "discovered" here.
Last.fm - now people can tag their music 'gothic lolita' if that's what users actually refer to it; tags are a new way that microcontent is attaching itself to other microcontent
Amateur is French, for people who do things for passion; "Good amateurs are better than crappy professionals."
Folks that won't like amateurs are monopolies: telephone companies, Microsoft, and Hollywood.
Q: on future of blogging [supposed to have been the published title of Joi's talk]
A: Future of blogging is all about the amateur revolution. Ohmynews - you pay $100 to train as citizen journalist; if you attend all classes you get your money back. People get paid via tipjar - one article alone got $20,000 in tips. Part of reason that blogging hasn't taken off in Korea as much is so many are participating in this citizen journalism.
ac2005 web2.0 tagging social software creative class business model
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