Social-networking maven Kevin Kelly posts some fascinating thoughts on the past and future of user-generated content systems (Wikipedia, distributed networks, smart mobs, blogs, and such). At issue is how such systems balance the aggregated, bottom-up insights of non-experts against the editing, filtering, curating, and clarifying energy of top-down, ”elite” content managers.
We all know by now that the traditional model — where a few, favored individuals and institutions select, craft, and distribute content through authorized channels — is turning upside-down. That flip is what’s making traditional cultural institutions so nervous, and nudging established cultural gatekeepers to scan the want ads. But Kelly warns that purely bottom-up systems can’t get us where we want to go, either.
Rather, he says, it’s the balance of mass insight against thoughtful selection, design, and direction that defines the new frontier. We won’t end up on either side of that equation, just dancing around the middle.
Even that bastion of the hive mind, Wikipedia, is not a purely distributed network of non-expert content creators. Rather, it’s a mass-input device structured and manipulated by a different kind of editor. Says Kelly:
…a close inspection of Wikipedia’s process reveals that it has an elite at its center, (and that it does have an elite center is news to most). Turns out there is far more deliberate top-down design management going on than first appears. This is why Wikipedia has worked in such a short time.
How does this relate to arts and cultural management? In almost every way. Our professional cultural institutions were primarily built on the traditional model of content creation, development, selection, and delivery. A handful of highly skilled and aesthetically (or economically) elite individuals defined what we do, and determined who would get to do it (providing centuries of extraordinary results, I might add). But now that the world is shifting to a more bottom-up, participatory, and mass-insight infrastructure, our way of working has become increasingly awkward and anachronistic.
Kelly suggests that the solution is not to swing entirely toward the hive mind, nor to abandon the role of curator, editor, expert, or even elite. The solution is in bringing our artful eye toward rethinking the system itself:
The real art of business and organizations in the network economy will not be in harnessing the crowd of “everybody” (simple!) but in finding the appropriate hybrid mix of bottom and top for each niche, at the right time.
Let the hybrids begin!
‘Swounds! That’s a biggie! How about a Marxian twist? “Bottom” and “top” imply embedded cultural value judgments. How did the curators and gate-keepers achieve their positions? In how many cases was some connection to unequal distribution of wealth the primary determiner of the elite? With the means of production distributed more evenly, those on the “bottom” (meaning not having access to the means of production) can gain a certain amount of access to the controls – and they have. It’s the four-track garage-band sound-studio of the free market of ideas! Somebody throw me a life preserver before the real philosophy majors show up!
Great post Andrew!
SITI has been working with some of the more literal interpretations of the concepts you mention above through our new online community (SITI’s Extended Ensemble or SEE).
Our current thinking is, what if there were a way to incorporate all the bottom-up and top-down aspects of an organization’s online presence into one tool. We are trying to take the conversations and relationships that start in our training programs and performances and continue them in an online setting. The goal being that these online conversations will inform the work, or generate new possibilities for collaboration, the next time there is a face-to-face interaction between the Company and artists/audiences (“A seamless loop of participation” as Erika Block describes it).
The community has been built on a mix of content and conversations from the company members themselves as well as users. We wanted to build something with a niche focus and allowed for more control or moderation from the artists and organization than other social media outlets (Facebook and My Space for example). We are building the site as a hybrid of a traditional website and networking tool: with the same eye for branding and design (broadcasting information) as well as community building / social networking. Its great to hear some of these ideas expressed in another context.
Last bit of this shameless plug:
http://siti.collectivex.com