Are we in the middle of an Internet Renaissance?

I am not usually in agreement with singularitarians, but this article was very interesting, I think.

In essence, the article draws a parallel between the explosion of arts and culture of the historical Renaissance and the one sparked in the last years by the availability of Internet, and argues that the "Internet Renaissance" is superior to the older one in breadth and potential:

I am less than convinced when the author argues that the Italian Renaissance imitated slavishly the classics and was

But I think that he has a point when he says that the flourishing of arts and technology which is being sparked by the current communication technologies surpasses even the Renaissance in richness and complexity. Of course, much of what is being produced has little to no artistic merit; but that's always been the case anyway.

Furthermore, the author of the article argues that, in particular, writing has improved radically thanks to the Internet, both in sheer amount and in quality; and that we are heading towards

What do you think? How does the current period compares to other periods of cultural and artistic development?

Done.

edited 2nd May '12 5:55:02 AM by Carciofus

We don't open "link-discuss" threads. A "link-discuss" thread is one where the OP has a brief statement, a video, a link or an article and no summary, no context, and no definitions of the terms used.

Ideally, an OTC thread should be such that just reading the OP is enough to be able to write a good post.

Your OP is otherwise OK (since we don't need definitions of "renaissance" or "the Internet,") but I want you to summarise the link. Edit a summary of it into your OP so that people know what it's about before they read your comments about it.

Thanks.

edited 2nd May '12 5:46:27 AM by BestOf

Well I hope it doesn't end like The Second Renaissance

Indeed.

People are naive to think the Internet Revolution wont alter everything in our societies.

We are just on the early stages and already the changes are dramatic. But, whereas they first were simple methodological upgrading of already pre-existent systems, the internet is now exerting a much more subversive influence on the way we conceive reality itself.

Indeed we are in a second renaissance, but also in a second enlightenment and a second industrial revolution all of them put together.

edited 2nd May '12 6:02:41 AM by Baff

I'm really looking forward to reading my children's history textbooks to see what they say about the current era.

Sorry, had to get that one out of my system.

I'd have to be sold on the idea that writing overall has improved, but at the very least it's much easier to filter crap at a glance, and the sheer volume means that you're naturally going to get more good stuff quantitatively, even if not proportionally.

Still, I'd be hesitant to call it a Renaissance given how much legislation and backroom deals are getting rammed through to try and preserve legacy business models that the Internet would otherwise demolish. If too much of that becomes the norm, we may well be headed for a Dark Age.

edited 2nd May '12 2:03:59 PM by Pykrete

I think it is a bit conservative to say that we're in the middle: I think we're just getting started.

As someone pointed out, the works on the Internet are full of crap, and it feels as if people are still figuring out the best way to do things with this new medium. On top of that, there are still those who are scared of this shiny thing, to the point that they want to regulate or outright ban it. This, to me, is a sign that the Internet is still in the early stages of development.

To be fair, professional offline work is full of crap too, but the barriers to entry are usually such that you at least get people who put in enough resources that they're likely to have bothered editing or something.

edited 2nd May '12 2:35:45 PM by Pykrete

Hence why I said it's the beginning. Creators are still figuring out what is good enough to be put up in the Internet.

That's the thing. With no barrier to entry and almost no cost of failure except for the time already invested, there's not really any motive to figure out what's "good enough to put up".

edited 2nd May '12 2:41:55 PM by Pykrete

Also, until recently, after finishing High School the vast majority of people never wrote much beyond the occasional postcard, perhaps.

Compared to that, even bad fanfiction and rants on Internet forums are a marked improvement, I think.

Personally, I'd think a written account of Gamzee boinking Bertie Wooster is a step down from the postcard.

Beginning of a renaissance. Not the middle just yet.

I think the momentum is somewhere between starting and in middle. It's been almost a couple of decades after all

Yeah, but even if people put up all sorts of crap, we're now getting sites that pre-filter all the good stuff for us. You can go from the meme-infested swamps of the internet to the higher intellectual discussions that combine knowledgeable people globally. Not to mention with sites such as deviantart.com or conceptart.org, you just choose "highest rated" and bam, lots of good stuff on top that you won't ever possibly have enough time to enjoy all of it.

Guys like Google still have a heck of a lot of work set out for them because there's a zillion sites and most of them have garbage search options, yet that's the number one problem in the internet; trying to filter out what you don't want and get what you want. Go on an art site, use a powerful search engine, find a bunch of pictures related to what you are looking for. Never before could you, in the space of a few seconds, gather dozens upon dozens of related images. Picture what it would have been like before when people would have the same stale information from magazines or books for months or years on end. At the best, you'd get periodicals once a month, newspapers once a week. I can barely get on in a day without checking online news at my favourite sites.

It's interesting how the Italian Renaissance was created by an influx of old ideas from Roman and Greek times.

A quick look at today's society shows a lot of backward-looking and nostalgic ideas. Not only do we have Millennials who proudly call themselves 80s or 90s Kids, but new genres are popping up like Steampunk. More people (or at least more than before) are reading and watching classics like Shakespeare or Sherlock Holmes, whether it's the original or an adaptation. All of that comes back as a cultural revolution and better stuff overall.

I do notice that popular culture is more eclectic now. I keep running into kids who are clearly too young to remember my childhood adopting things that I remember from my childhood.

Depends on what you're actually looking at. Some areas of culture are advancing further than others, especially media.

In general, virtually every type of media, thanks to advancing technology, is becoming increasingly easier to make, and the barriers of access are also lowering dramatically. Larger media companies, who used to be 'gatekeepers', are now increasingly becoming 'enablers' instead, using their money to fund projects with higher production values, while independent individuals/groups can make smaller-budget productions by themselves with increasing ease.

Music production and the written word in particular are becoming so incredibly easy to produce and publish for anyone who is capable in those arts that any kind of agreement with a publishing agent or record company is completely unnecessary - I mean, iTunes by itself is big enough now that they've discarded DRM, but there's plenty of other services out there that enable people to sell their musical and written works at a reasonable price, and in some cases, enable the consumer to purchase neat extras like C Ds.

Multimedia productions like animation, film and gaming is much more difficult due to the need for multidisciplinary experience in a team or individual as well as the time investment, but there are rapidly growing indie scenes creating some very, very cool stuff.

Now, among the biggest obstacles? The incumbents. In other words, the older, larger companies who are less than thrilled with technology undermining their existing business models. They're pretty much the reason why stuff like DRM and bills like SOPA are even a problem. As well, copyright and patent law has been mostly crafted in their favour (well, mostly - patent law, hilariously enough, involves big companies fighting amongst themselves as well as going after the small guys), though there is movement to try and cut down on copyright term limits and fix the bad parts of the DMCA.

So, yeah, if we really want the digital renaissance to get fully underway, the incumbents are going to have to get out of the way - possibly by force.

edited 9th Dec '13 11:05:15 PM by Cronosonic

But then won't some of the independents become the new incumbents?

There will always be people resistant to change. It's called "the innovator's dilemma" - those who already profit from an existing market will be less willing to take on new products or services that effectively cannibalize their existing products/services. It happened back when the first cars were being made, and it's happening now, with technologies like smartphones and internet services being made by upstarts ripping the ground right out from under the big players.

Here's a thought, RE: "The Innovator's Dilemma"...

Given the idea that "Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it," and the fact that up-and-coming creators are experiencing history unfold dramatically... Is it possible that, in years or decades to come, there will be more creators and (media) companies who are open to shifts like this?