Is it just us, or…
We keep running into ex-colleagues, all of whom, when asked what they’re doing, answer “it’s not that easy to sum up” by which they mean:
I’ve got a couple of paying projects going, plus I’m on the edge of other stuff that might or might not turn into work, but involves people interesting enough that it’s worth some time anyways, plus you know, I’ve got that blog thing going and bits of other stuff on the side.
Long ago, we had a gig as armchair futurists at a Famous Ad Agency. One of our favourite predictions was that the structure of creative business would go the way of Hollywood: rather than existing as long-term corporate entities, groups of highly-skilled freelancers would be assembled for the life of a specific project, at the completion of which they would pack their bags and head of to the next one.
The model never really caught on in adland. However, this month we get the feeling that our generation has finally crossed some intangible tipping point. We see signs and portents: people, it’s practically raining frogs over Soho. Key indicator: suddenly we’re all exploiting network utilities like FaceBook, and communities like PlannerSphere not just to keep ‘in touch’ but to expand the size of the network which we touch (see note [1], below).
We’re building structures which accumulate and expose opportunity, knowledge, income. Crucially, we are doing this for ourselves.
We’re also, in the flux of transmutation, restructuring our personal brands, making our own individual and collective land grabs for authority, influence, status and respect. We’re building a colony, out in the unmapped places, and things don’t need to be the same way they were back home at the centre of Empire. It’s all up for grabs.
Which isn’t to imply that we’re shortchanging shareholders in the companies that pay us — the more efficient our networks, the quicker and better we can turn the work around. Happy clients mean more income and repeat business (we’re tip-toeing quietly over the sleeping issue of where and for whom the glittering prizes of intellectual property and long-term value will accrue).
But before you drink the Electric Kool Aid, we also suggest you pick up (and yes, read, dammit) a copy of Fred Turner’s excellent From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Turner’s book offers a good critical history of exactly this kind of technotopian futurism, a worldview which comes with heavier and more unpleasant historical baggage than you might expect. We say: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. On FaceBook”.
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1. Sphere is the wrong metaphor. A sphere maximises the amount of stuff held within. Now is all about maximising surface area, expanding the opportunities for contact, the opportunities available for each of us, alone or together, to touch, engage, involve the rest of everything. We advocate forms which are the topographic opposite of spherical — hyperbolic surfaces: folded, gnarly, spaces where surface is everything. We will stand or fall by the richness of our contact with the world as a whole, not just that within the closing horizons of our tiny corner of a corner of it.
![[Image relating to the story 100proofTRUTH Issue 5]](http://www.bigshinything.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/picture-2.png)
![[Image relating to the story The Cross Bones Geese]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3250/2519066152_8a1f23a942.jpg)
![[Image relating to the story Big Shiny …er Sea Slugs]](http://www.bigshinything.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/picture-1.png)
![[Image relating to the story The Polaroid Kid]](http://www.bigshinything.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/adc202.jpg)
My God, this is so correct. But it sends me in to a spin. What does it mean for Politics? And do to our communal fantasies that “all us powerless little losers” will gang up and “tear the city apart” - to quote artist Banksy?
Well… there are any number of ways to cut it.
I’m old enough to view the new gold dream with a certain scepticism (hence the title for the story — there’s a level at which all these thrusting young things, shiny-eyed and talking up the ‘new’ digitally-mediated collectivism, seem as blinkered as the Thatcher-era city kids, riding the boom). At another level, we’ve been talking exactly this kind of network-entrepreneurial future up for the last decade, and it’s exciting to see a change in the weather.
This can be a time of flux and re-arrangment of intent, loyalties, and maybe just maybe, a shifting of the centre of people’s focus in- or onto something of more mutual benefit than the traditional ‘career in media’. I hope that’s true.
As I see it, the more original thought and power there is in the network rather than in the the PLC, the better. I hope we end up with something a little closer to the form of guilds — supportive of ‘our’ people, and looking out for each other, sharing our learnings in the network.
Personally, I feel a ‘wrong’ outcome would be to emulate the Wired-era crew (read Turner’s book) & jump straight into some New Right version of libertarianism within which our ONLY value, and only opportunity, comes from being a Big Name on FaceBook, or a top-5 blogger.
Trading a career and some security for that kind of elitism wouldn’t really seem a fair trade to me.
Uh rant over. That story is here to hopefully start some meta-discussion of what ‘we’ are up to, and what we can do. There’s a storm brewing: we need all the meteorological ironmongery — be they weathervanes or lightening rods — we can forge.
Brilliant post, Darrell
And since I’m still silly enough to believe in revolutions:
The Agency Is Dead. Long Live The Agency!
http://www.adamcrowe.com/2007/06/30/the-agency-is-dead-long-live-the-agency/
Note to self: I must find out how the guilds would share property and profit. cos there may be more mutual excitement in this network-entrpreneurial future. There is more gold. But authorship and intellectual property are the tradeable currencies. How to realise the dream where the ‘gold’ includes not just cash in the bank but a continuing interest in this property?
exactly. that’s one of the tricky bits. which is why its imporant people are talking about this — AND learning from other corners of network culture where similar (but not the same) issues apply - software/research/music etc. it would also be a ‘bad’ result if we all just ended up producing ‘work for hire’ with no rights to the value in it. there IS more gold. Hopefully enough for everyone. We just need to not be so excited by the Big Shiny Thing that we forget to make sure we’re looking after each other… all ideas welcome… and this might be an interesting read (haven’t read it myself yet): The Return of the Guild? Network Relations in Historical Perspective
Malformed link
http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/WP322.pdf
that link works for me…
http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/WP322.pdf
if you can’t get to it, shout and i’ll upload a separate copy
d
excellent post darrell.
I thought more on this topic but only ended up retracing the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Is there anything new that need be said? Can we say it better?
Anomaly are building IP via their work with clients:
http://www.anomalynyc.com
I think ‘folded, gnarly, spaces’ should be a sub-brand of Big Shiny Thing - therein IP may lie
anything more that need be said? dunno. anything more needing be done? hell yes — the doing of it! cluetrain, as manifestos tend to be, is a call to arms. we still need to roll up our sleeves and start work on the munitions: the organisational structures, working practices and process patterns that make any of this sustainable and of shared benefit. MUCH to be done.