Could Clay Shirky’s “File-sharing Goes Social” be prescient? Well, probably.
Just looking at that Friendster thing, though, I’m thinking these social file-trading networks could be much larger than the dozen or so that he speaks about.
Oh, where’s that Magic Bus when you need it!?
Hey cool, thanks a lot for that link. That’s some good stuff. My head is very much swimming in all of this stuff, in the big-ass frustration of it. Right there in that article was a part about how the most popular songs are easier to find now, and the less popular ones are harder to find, and that’s probably 95% of what drove me out of the whole thing up to this point. In Napster days I could go search for Camel and find a buncha weird songs that I’ve yet to be able to find on CD. I was able to download the complete Buckingham Nicks album and burn a CD of it — that’s a thing that cannot be bought because the label it was on went under and no one’s figured out a good way to redistribute it, so it’s never made it to CD. EXCEPT by bootleggers, who make CD copies from other sources, like records. So first I bought a vinyl copy off of Ebay for 25 bucks, before I knew about Napster, then I found the mp3s, most of them decent sounding, and so have been able to keep the vinyl from getting any play until I get a really good turntable (one o’ these days…) It makes me so mad, the loss of all of these wonderful things that technology could do for us just because of.
Because of. Of. Everyone. It’s an old thing I’m feeling here. The over-users who do it all immorally and the dumbass business and government guys who can’t see past their noses.
I’m quite sure that at some point I’ll be able to get past spouting off about this to everyone and talk about something else. Anyway, good link.
Or maybe it’s just the cranky growing pains of something really kickass. You know, I sort of wobble between those two optimistic/pessimistic extremes. Maybe (hopefully) I’ll come to rest (if I ever do) somewhere in the middle.