The people's platform : taking back power and culture in the digital age
Record details
- ISBN: 9780805093568 (hbk.) :
- ISBN: 0805093567
-
Physical Description:
print
276 pages ; 24 cm - Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York, New York : Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2014.
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-263) and index. |
Formatted Contents Note: | A peasant's kingdom -- For love or money -- What we want -- Unequal uptake -- The double anchor -- Drawing a line. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Internet Social aspects Virtual reality Equality |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Kirtland Community College.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kirtland Community College Library | HM 851 .T39 2014 | 30775305472178 | General Collection | Available | - |
Publishers Weekly Review
The People's Platform : Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
With compelling force and manifestlike style, writer and documentary filmmaker Taylor lays out one of the smartest-and most self-evident-arguments about the nature and effect of technology in our digital age. "Technology alone," she acknowledges, "will not deliver the cultural transformation we have been waiting for; instead, we need to first understand and then address the underlying social and economic forces that shape it." Despite the illusion of a level digital playing field, she observes, there are really only a handful of gatekeepers that provide access to information. "Amazon controls one-tenth of all American online commerce," for example. She acknowledges that while the Internet allows us to witness amazing feats of inventiveness, "real cultural democracy means more than everyone with an Internet connection having the ability to edit entries on Wikipedia or leave indignant comments." Taylor suggests that we can promulgate a more democratic culture by "supporting creative work not because it is viral but because it is important, focusing on serving needs as well as desires, and making sure marginalized people are given not just a chance to speak but to be heard." Taylor's provocative book has the power to help shape discussions about the role of technology in our world. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
CHOICE_Magazine Review
The People's Platform : Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
CHOICE
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Taylor offers a timely analysis of the Web and contemporary culture. The volume's six chapters--plus a preface and a conclusion--address topics such as online labor, independent journalism, digital democracy, and marketing of Web applications and Web-enabled devices. Chapters 1 and 5 are especially strong. The former examines popular discourse surrounding the Web and provides an exceptional critique of openness. The latter discusses issues of copyright and ownership and begins with compelling examples drawn from the author's experiences as an independent documentary filmmaker. Though written with a popular audience in mind, this book will prove valuable for students and scholars of media studies or Internet culture. --Dawn Shepherd, Boise State University
Library Journal Review
The People's Platform : Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
The Internet is often lauded as an open, democratic marketplace of ideas and goods in which anyone can thrive. In her sweeping critique, documentary filmmaker -Taylor (Zizek!) challenges this notion, arguing that networked technology has allowed for greater concentration of power and has reduced transparency. Her well-researched, unsettling, and occasionally downright harrowing book explores the consolidation of popularity; the stubborn digital divide; copyright and piracy; and the pervasive power of advertising. She deplores the resource intensity, hazardous e-waste, and other obscured costs of digital technology, with its obsolescence ensured more by producer-guided popularity than by function, and the ignorance of its users as to these costs. In the midst of an incalculable array of information, our ignorance is all the greater, as the decline of investigative journalism reduces our awareness of local, domestic, and international events, and as Internet companies push the familiar to users with increasing specificity as the universe of personal data available to these companies expands. VERDICT Taylor makes the case for a government-supported sustainable online culture that promotes the public good and encourages journalism and the arts. This provocative populist manifesto on an utterly timely subject deserves a wide audience among policymakers and consumers alike. [See Prepub Alert, 8/1/13.]-Janet Ingraham Dwyer, State Lib. of Ohio, Columbus (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
New York Times Review
The People's Platform : Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
New York Times
July 13, 2014
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company
ASTRA TAYLOR is a documentary filmmaker who has described her work as the "steamed broccoli" in our cultural diet. Her last film, "Examined Life," depicted philosophers walking around and talking about their ideas. She's the kind of creative person who was supposed to benefit when the Internet revolution collapsed old media hierarchies. But two decades since that revolution began, she's not impressed: "We are at risk of starving in the midst of plenty," Taylor writes. "Free culture, like cheap food, incurs hidden costs." Instead of serving as the great equalizer, the web has created an abhorrent cultural feudalism. The creative masses connect, create and labor, while Google, Facebook and Amazon collect the cash. Taylor's thesis is simply stated. The preInternet cultural industry, populated mainly by exploitative conglomerates, was far from perfect, but at least the ancien régime felt some need to cultivate cultural institutions, and to pay for talent at all levels. Along came the web, which swept away hierarchies - as well as paychecks, leaving behind creators of all kinds only the chance to be fleetingly "Internet famous." And anyhow, she says, the web never really threatened to overthrow the old media's upper echelons, whether defined as superstars, like Beyoncé, big broadcast television shows or Hollywood studios. Instead, it was the cultural industry's middle classes that have been wiped out and replaced by new cultural plantations ruled over by the West Coast aggregators. It is hard to know if the title, "The People's Platform," is aspirational or sarcastic, since Taylor believes the classless aura of the web masks an unfair power structure. "Open systems can be starkly inegalitarian," she says, arguing that the web is afflicted by what the feminist scholar Jo Freeman termed a "tyranny of structurelessness." Because there is supposedly no hierarchy, elites can happily deny their own existence. ("We just run a platform.") But the effects are real: The web has reduced professional creators to begging for scraps of attention from a spoiled public, and forced creators to be their own brand. Taylor's critique hits hard because she's not so easily dismissed as reactionary critics like Andrew Keen or Evgeny Morozov who tend to regard the web's cultural products as the juvenile doodlings of the undereducated. She accepts that there may be plenty of talent out there, but she thinks it's being exploited; she's seen what Clay Shirky called "Here Comes Everybody," the Internet's promise of inclusivity and collaboration, and thinks it hasn't been good for anybody (except maybe online advertisers). Taylor subjects the "Internet famous" narrative to a particularly scathing critique. The story is familiar: An unknown artist self-produces a video, only to see it go viral and reach millions, gaining herself an interview on the "Today" show. O.K., so then what? It's just back to serfdom (with exceptions, like E.L. James, author of "Fifty Shades of Grey," which began as "Twilight" fan fiction). In any event, the odds of going viral are comparabie to winning the lottery, but the lottery, to its credit, actually pays out in cash. You might say virality is the promise that keeps the proletariat toiling in the cultural factories, instead of revolting and asking for something better. "The People's Platform" has the flavor of a "Roger & Me" for the American cultural industries, and it will resonate with those in the creative classes who have seen their lives made harder by the web: writers of serious nonfiction, musicians, playwrights, novelists and investigative journalists. Combined, these make for a highly sympathetic class. But to the extent that Taylor condemns the web as generally bad for culture, the narrative is not free of complications. For one thing, her critique is far weaker for the part-timers, hobbyists and amateurs who use the web: The average Instagram user isn't exactly trying to make a career out of selfies and may not feel particularly exploited. The web, moreover, has created more than just cheaper versions of what came before - the core sites of Internet culture, say Awkward Family Photos (which collects same), are really just categories unto themselves. The uncomfortable fact that Taylor does not highlight is that it is noncareerists as much as aggregators who are doing the damage she describes. Absent also is the consumer qua consumer. Taylor believes we suffer from being pandered to by clickable content and a general erosion in the quality of content. But there's more to the Internet than listicles, and when we consider ourselves as just readers or viewers the stubborn fact is that it has never been cheaper or easier to get at good stuff. Netflix and YouTube are a bonanza for lovers of obscure television and film. And while many in publishing hate Amazon with a passion once reserved for television, no one can deny that readers can nowadays buy more books for less. A full accounting cannot ignore just how accessible culture has become. Leaving aside these complications, Taylor does force us to consider one big question : "What do we lose if we let the middle go missing?" She sees the solution in a movement toward "sustainable culture" (which, as with organic food, would presumably mean paying more for things), along with more public support for the arts. As she points out, we've taken to assuming that culture will just take care of itself, when that's never been the case. The tech industry might be tempted to dismiss Taylor's arguments as merely a version of typewriter manufacturers' complaints circa 1984, but that would be a mistake. "The People's Platform" should be taken as a challenge by the new media that have long claimed to be improving on the old order. Can they prove they are capable of supporting a sustainable cultural ecosystem, in a way that goes beyond just hosting parties at the Sundance Film Festival? We see some of this in the tech firms that have begun to pay for original content, as with Netflix's investments in projects like "Orange Is the New Black." It's also worth pointing out that the support of culture is actually pretty cheap. Consider the nonprofit ProPublica, which employs investigative journalists, and has already won two Pulitzers, all on a budget of just over $10 million a year. That kind of money is a rounding error for much of Silicon Valley, where losing billions on bad acquisitions is routinely defended as "strategic." If Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon truly believe they're better than the old guard, let's see it. The creative masses connect, create and labor, while Google and Facebook collect the cash. TIM WU is the author of "The Master Switch" and a candidate for lieutenant governor of New York.
BookList Review
The People's Platform : Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
The Internet, many thought, was going to usher in a new era of information sharing; of open, unfettered communication; of new arts and new media. But, instead, Taylor argues in this persuasive book, the Internet has given us more of the same. Instead of leveling the playing field, giving everyone equal opportunities to succeed creatively and economically, the Internet carried over the traditional problems: corporate monopolies at the controls, unfair economic practices, and a disproportionate focus on popularity and mass appeal. The author isn't saying we should rebuild the Internet from scratch but, instead, that we should strive to create a more democratic Web in which users are treated like citizens, not consumers or unpaid workers. We need, in other words, a new financial model. Newspapers, he points out, are being hurt by the enormous amount of online content, and most of that content is generated by people who aren't paid for their work. How, Taylor asks, is that fair? A smart, well-reasoned approach to a highly topical subject.--Pitt, David Copyright 2014 Booklist