This space not for rent

There’s so much that we share
that its time we’re aware
it’s a small world after all

Robert and Richard Sherman wrote the song for which Disney has become known, andwhich personally grates on my nerves like a dozen dying cats simultaneously scrapping their claws across a blackboard.   About the same time the words to the song were being written, Marshall McLuhan was writing about the global village.  Back in 1962 and 1964 he wrote about print being brought to an end by “electronic interdependence”.  Back then it was only debated.

Now it’s reality.

We haven’t quite reached the concept of “Cyberspace” created by author William Gibson in 1982 in his novel Burning Chrome . We certainly haven’t reached the zenith of virtual reality described by Neil Stephenson in Snow Crash .  In fact some people, like Mike Sellers in an article entitled Death to Snow Crash, over at Tera Nova  have heaped disdain for the concept  of a global virtual world depicted in Snow Crash, calling it “the equivalent of the “flying cars” view of the today as seen from 1935.”   The Metaverse of Gibson and Stephenson has not, and mostly likely will never come to pass.  What we have seen is a reloaded version of the same thing.  We do not plug a cable into the back of our heads like Keanu Reaves in the Matrix movies, but we do plug into the thoughts of others around the world – I think of it as a virtual back porch.

While the global consensual virtual reality of William Gibson and Neil Stephenson has not come to pass, Marshall McLuhan’s global village has….

With a vengeance.

Just ask Garrison Keiller, who, distraught that no one needed to ask permission to write any more (especially his apparently), decided to heap a bit of distain on our corner of the global village while he was at it:

“18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75” – Garrison Keiller

What may be the burr that stuck under Garrison Keiller’s particular tail are events described in the May 31, 2010 issue of Time Magazine:

“Your industry may have been in recession the past few years, but mine was in free fall. Lee Kravitz, editor of Parade was fired on a Monday morning during a one-minute hallway conversation,  Dominique Browning who ran House & Garden for Conde’ Nast, magazinedom’s most glamorous company, was also a Monday morning casualty.” – Andrea Sachs, Layoff Lit: In publishing sudden unemployment begets a fashionable genre, Time Magazine, May 31, 2010

As Andrea Sachs tells us later in the same article, “No time for niceties when 400 magazines a year are doing dark.” We spoke about the reason why this is happening with Mr. Colin Campbell (former editor of Edge Online) back in Show 31 available here and here. We have discussed part of it in All the News that’s Fit to Pay for .  While a quote from the movie Ghostbusters by the character Dr. Egon Spengler “Print is dead” may be a bit blunt, it is starting to seem like yet another prophetic statement.

One of the major outcomes of the reality of the global village is the simple fact that by time even a daily newspaper can set the news in print, the Internet has already discussed it thoroughly and moved on to the next issue. By the time a PC Gamer, or a Beckett Massively Online magazine can discuss “new happenings” in the gaming industry it has already been around the global village several times.

More than ever, however, the issue of “time to press” seems an effect rather than the central issue.

What struck a chord with me was something I found later on in the same issue of Time Magazine.  This issue featured an article about the Hollywood’s Special Effects houses and how they are changing the industry. About half way through the article there is a quote by Scott Ross, the former CEO of Digital Domain (2012, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The day after tomorrow):

“It’s no longer about Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise, says Ross. “It’s about flooding New York or creating blue people.” – Rebecca Keegan, Hollywood’s VFX Sweatshops, Time Magazine, May 31, 2010

The first time I read that quote I simply took it to mean that the major draw in movies is the special effects. Indeed, throughout the article it described the slim profit margins on which the special effects houses operate, often breaking even at best, and usually taking the lucrative jobs for the prestige. But the more I thought about the words, the more “It’s no longer about Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise” rang true.

When mass media meant reading a newspaper or a book, the only authors that really mattered to us were those whose works saw print by companies like Simon and Schuster and Double Day.  With the advent of the global village made real all that has changed.  No longer is quality journalism the purview of those authors whose works come to us from the lofty heights of printed media. When authors like Tipa from Mystic Worlds and Saylah from West Karana  have access to as wide an audience as PC Gamer and Becket Massive Online Gamer, words printed on paper in magazines and newspapers no longer guarantee an audience, or a respected opinion.  In fact I am more likely to value the opinion of my neighbor in the global village, who I talk to from time to time, than those individuals upon whom society once heaped so much prestige. Certainly there will always be authors whose creativity we value – authors with names like Stephen King, William Gibson, and Agatha Christie.  Now the creative works we come to value can just as easily be those individuals whose names we might never have heard before the global village made real.

In the end, those upon whom society once placed such high prestige may be finding it suddenly missing.  To draw the analogy back to the words of Mr. Scott Ross, perhaps the Tom Cruise’s and the Tom Hanks’ find themselves at a bit of a loss when the more valued efforts are those of the many artists who find themselves listed at the end of the movie credits “after the taco vendor” as Mr. Ross puts it. When it comes to prestige those best quote I have ever read are the words recently written by the mother superior of a Carmelite Convent:

“Prestige is living in other people’s minds, valuing what people think of you rather than who you really are.” – Mother Mary Elizabeth, St. Therese Monastery of Discalced Carmelites

And the truth of the matter, more now than ever, is that the space in many people’s minds once occupied solely by the words of the few and the famed,  is no longer for rent.

See you online,

Julie Whitefeather

Coming up next on the No Prisoners, No Mercy Show

Coming up next on the No Prisoners, No Mercy Show

One show 62 author Dedra Stevenson comes to us all the way from the United Arab Emirates to talk to us about The Hakima’s Tale Trilogy (now in print in the UAE and being released here).  On show 63 Fran and Julie take a break from all of the guests and just sit down and talk about the events going on in the gaming industry around us.  On show 64 (being recorded today) Tipa from West Karana, Saylah from Mystic Worlds, and Ravious from Kill Ten Rats get together with Fran and I to have a go at round 2 in a discussion of Lord of the Rings Online.