My Comments on Joi Ito's Opening Speech @ Les Blogs

Joi Ito

This is a joyful picture I took of Mr. Joi Ito (Technorati) at the conference Les Blog: Blogs and Social Software, which was held in Paris on April 25, 2005.

He gave a pretty long speech on creativity, affirming that the real difference nowadays is not between Iran and Japan, from example, but is between a creative class willing to share its ideas and users.

Actually, this is true only in terms of Internet creativity. I wonder whether African music and classical European music are similar! Or Indian traditional styles of dance and German folkloric dances. Civilizations differ a lot dependind on where they are located, their past history, their economic conditions and so on.

Moreover, I think that the Internet is like TV, only much more accessible than any TV channel. We have a global market with very similar products and global cultural politics of market.
But in the “real” world there is a big difference between markets, and between cultural production.

Talking about creativity, almost everybody (in Western countries) can create his/her own page, blog, music, archive and so on.

But… a big but: this creates democratisation (as we have already written in our e-journals in 1994), but also a wrong perception of the real possibilities of the single or the group who “create” a page, a blog, ecc.

In other terms: many play God in the Internet world, perceiving themselves as highly creative, but new, original stuff is difficult, o my, it’s so difficult!

Good stuff, thought-provoking stuff, is equally difficult. It’s not so easy either to shake people’s minds, giving also a good time with a good thing to look at, to read, to play, to enjoy.

My second comment is that you Joi affirmed that there are people who decide what to use, what product is best and, in general, make a product popular. Nobody can really determine the market but people. Therefore, if bloggers decide on new trends, they decide for everybody! Above all, blogging is spreading so fast that is kind of revolutionary.
And you gave the example of music freely downloaded in the Internet. Nobody can really prevent people from downloding it, and law should simply allow it.

I could not agree more Joi! Bloggers decide for themselves… But this is just a tiny tiny bit of the market, a tiny tiny piece of “creation”, covered by a few, copied by many, enjoyed by more people. But always and only a few people in the world. Just let’s not play God..
And music is freely downloaded because is free. Not because bloggers or the Internet world have decided to do so, but just because everybody can downloaded it paying nothing, provided he/she has access to a computer. And it does not require special skills to do so.

On playing God and creation: How much good, realiable stuff can you see in the Internet Joi?
I closely followed (as an outsider, but still..) the life of the first commercial blogs here in Milan: believe me, they are often badly written, and news are recycled and hardly verified.
Just taken for granted. Often, they are poorly commented, too.

BTW, this is what I wanted to say to Jason Calacanis, who in his speech said that bloggers spread news = truth faster than journalists. Well, a news is not “the” truth and is not always true. And often it’s just the perception of truth!
In other words, this is what bloggers see and live, what we can see from our limited observatory, which is independent (more or less) from the politicized editorial world, and much faster yes, but often very limited.

Again on creativity and market: Internet and the blogs’ voice can cover only a small part of the world: A computer-literate world, a world that has good electricity 1st, dedicated lines, hardware, and some technical skills.

Your predicament about differences is partially true in the Internet world only in Japan, or in Iranian cities (I doubt in the Iranian countryside or in the desert though), in Europe, in the USA, etc. But I am sure it does not reach countries such as the Ivory Coast, or Botswana, Mauritania, ecc.
In Nepal for example, a country which I professionaly read/study about, only 24 % of women can read, and surely only a tiny part of them can have a computer, and surely these women live in big cities such as Kathmandu. What about women who live in the Pulpa district, for example? Is the blogs’ voice active among them? Do you thing they can own a computer and play on it after dinner, or perhaps women can blog before collecting wood in Terai?
And this has nothing to do with the current Maoist war..

The South of the World has nothing to eat, go figure whether it is hit by bloggers’ creativity or their use of a commercial product — a software, a song, anything.

Your third main point Joi was about the “myth” of the intellectual property. According to you, copyright laws are kind of bullshit.
Moreover, these laws cover products made by professionals, but a professional product is not better than a product made by an amateur. You gave the example of sex: professional sex is not better than amateur sex!

In general terms you are right. And everybody laughed at this.
But, Joi, what about the Academic world? The world of sciences?
Just to give an example, scholars who publish in our e-journals (JSAWS and IJTS) want to be sure that what they have written, which is original and originally discovered, studied, and personally written, is credited to them.
A scientist wants to take credit for his/her discovery as well.
A novelist does not like to be copied, not even in part, believe me.

Well, bloggers are often just rough writers, that’s for sure. They get up and in 10 minutes write their piece, often in shorter time, during coffee time.
But just imagine that you wrote a book in 3-5 years (average time for scholars), after making extensive research, possibly field research (in my subject, often dangerous or damaging research in terms of health, and always very difficult), in this case would you like to have the “product” of your passion, but also of your time, your expertise, your 2-3 degrees — involving years of study and a lot of money — etc., would you like your product to be authorized, even in part, by XY who just sat comfortably at home and just switched on his/her lap-top?

Moreover, with no publications, no job in the Academic world!

A final remark: you said that culture is remix of things, themes, items.
Anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss said 80-60 years ago that culture is the creative re-elaboration of existent themes. The peculiarity of any civilization is in its own re-elaboration.

Just like the Japanese civilization, which re-elaborated in a creative way Oriental and Western features!
Civilizations — world-wide — did not wait for the Internet world to “remix”, to re-elaborate. In other words: to create.

Nothing new under the sun…