The Evolving Corporate / Human Hybrid
Posted on December 22, 2007
Filed Under Awareness, Fake Culture, Movies, TV and Media | Leave a Comment
YouTube have set up a partner program allowing people to make money from the videos they upload. Naturally there are restrictions – copyright being the most obvious. At any rate, I find this interesting, because it is a part of the next step in the development of the corporate / individual hybrid.
As I talked about in the Human Cyberization post, there is an ongoing technological revolution where corporate products are increasingly integrating with the user. This allows us to effectively use the technology to create our own content. And of course that shifts the focus of what these gadgets are about. They stop being tools used for specific purposes – writing, communication etc. – and instead become lifestyle objects used to create a never ending supply of entertainment.
And that is where the corporations step back in; they have taken hold of this content-creation fad, and are guiding it, with iLife, Facebook, MySpace, cell phones and so on. On the first glance, it may appear that the power of entertainment has been taken out of their hands – and that is true to an extent. It all comes down to how we use and manage this technology, it actually has two faces, both of which can be broken down into a number of aspects. One face is that of the prosumer:
• Creating entertainment for the purposes of entertainment. How many YouTube videos are uploaded everyday? And how many of these serve a purpose other than simple distraction?
• Cell phones, texting, e-mail and instant messaging enable people to communicate on a constant basis. How much of this communication is effective and constructive, and how much of it is just noise?
• MP3 players are built into nearly everything now. How beneficial can listening to hours upon hours of music actually be?
You get the idea. To read those points it may seem as though I am being extremely negative, and I am actually highlighting the obvious; ‘entertainment’ has become all pervasive – it has actually begun to consume us – rather than us consume it.
That is the path of the human / corporate hybrid. Profit is made from us creating our own entertainment. On a deeper level, the technology is very addictive, and people often find themselves investing more and more time into it. In the end, it is a time-sink which serves little constructive benefit – yet at the same time enables us to empower the corporations behind the products.
But as I said earlier there are two faces to this, here are some aspects from the other side of the coin:
• With a bit of discernment, it is possible to access and be a part of a vast network of knowledge and experience. That in itself is utterly invaluable. The trick is avoiding the noise and locating the information and people who resonate with you personally.
• Creativity and self-expression can be taken to new levels – especially when the self-insulating nature of closed communities is overcome.
Those aspects and more and propel us to all new heights. So it’s very much about intentionally and consciously deciding how we what to access and use this evolution of technology. We can simply get swept away in the global tide of prosumerism, or we can use it to develop our understand and awareness of just about anything.
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