Sunday, April 10, 2011

An Anti-Economic Forecast for Creative Types

Franklin Harris pointed out the amusing work of cartoonist Kate Beaton, proving comics can cover brainy topics such as classical composers. 

Still, that doesn’t mean comics are often lucrative, and that leads me to a disturbing thought (at least for us writer-editor types):

As the number of people with cushy-enough lives to permit indulgence in writerly and other artistic endeavors increases (occasional financial collapses notwithstanding), there's no real economic reason we couldn’t someday (perhaps soon) reach the point where, say, the average blogger or comics creator (the average one, mind you, not a super-popular one) who wants his stuff to be seen, and is motivated by that desire even if he sees little chance for profit, actually has to pay the reader in order to be read.  I mean, wouldn’t you give preferential treatment in your websurfing to sites that paid you to read them?

See, and you thought information merely “wanting to be free” was already kinda scary for us media types.  Maybe I should learn arc-welding, just in case (or, as one publishing-industry friend suggests, set up a system like the one described above – for which the enforcement mechanism would have to be occasional subsequent pop quizzes on what you’d read, I suppose, with all prior payments void if you flunked). 

1 comment:

Thane Eichenauer said...

I don't believe in the common "wisdom" that "information wants to be free". I do believe that people want better information, more information and cheaper information, not all at the same time and not all in the same measure. This isn't any different than human civilization last week, last month, last year or 100 years ago. People desire better goods and services for less.