Sunday, October 11, 2020

Bring The Machine Home (It's Time For Internet 2.0)

 



<i.>
Vince Gill is feeling a bit grumpy these days, and so am I. But it's not just the issue he raises, though if you spend any amount of time creating music, like I do, it's definitely relevant, especially in light of the whole great rock 'n' roll swindle of streaming. You've probably seen the oft-discussed David Crosby meme, in which he talks about netting a fiver, based on royalties of nineteen-thousands of a cent from one of those streaming services -- yee-ikes! And I thought Mafia bosses skimped on fair division.

Devaluation of music isn't the only problem rattling around my brain, though, as I ponder what's happened to this lovely thing called the Internet, of which I became aware in 1995. My wife got there before I did, being the trailblazer that she is -- but that's how we started, going to the library, then tapping out your latest e-mail message, and shooting it off. Click, click, boom! Off it went, without a second thought. 

I'd started doing freelance magazine work, to supplement whatever the day jobs weren't paying (see the Jobs To Nowhere series), so I picked up on the coming of the digital era pretty fast. One minute, you were stuffing stories into some plain brown envelope -- a FedEx sleeve, for longer pieces -- the next, you were copying and pasting them into a blank white space, or attaching a document, and hitting your return key.

Click, click, boom! By the end of the '90s, you weren't using envelopes, plain brown or otherwise, and spending more and more time at all those new cyber cafes that were popping up like mushrooms -- or LANs (Local Area Network), if they had games, to lure the kids. You paid by the hour, so you had to work fast (though you could bend the rules somewhat, once you got to know the management.)

I enjoyed the explosion of blogs, fan sites and forums that sprang up, catering to every cult taste on the planet. I have fond memories of that experience, like the afternoon I spent at my crappy suburban Chicago office job, gently badgering one of my co-workers to print out all this info from a Badfinger site, simply because it had images of releases I'd never seen -- one of many ways that made the minute hand go faster, when the bossman wasn't lurking around.

Many of those virtual highways and byways are long gone, like the Little Splinters site, that catered to Paul Weller fans. (I spent a fair amount of time printing out the contents of that one, too.) Right away, you realized that permanence and tangibility weren't going to play a big role in this equation, as attention spans grew shorter and shorter.

But it didn't seem like such a pressing issue, when anything and everything seemed possible, because society had yet to come apart at the seams. Meanwhile, you kept on clicking and surfing, clicking and surfing. The world is yours, you told yourself. At least...that's how it seemed...at the time.


<"Bring The Machine Home,
Take I"/The Reckoner>

<ii.>
These days, it's a different ball game, of course. The promise and possibility that the mid- to late '90s signified now seems largely suffocated by the usual suspects -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft -- whose Mafia-like antics, and never-ending determination to twist whatever (and whoever) they can in pursuit of their goals consumes more and more and more of our attention, energy and time. 

We've seen this development at a basic level, with the forced format changes that they constantly impose, like Facebook's recent switch from its signature dark blue background (Classic Facebook) to its newer versions (or Clown White, or Off Black, as I call them). 

I'm used to it now, but it irritated me then, especially when the resulting pop-up box asked why you wanted to switch back to Classic Facebook. I wrote in the comment field, "If you really cared what we thought, you wouldn't be doing this, right?" I'm still waiting for a response on that one.

The encroachments on our time and energy don't end there. It's hardly surprising that the so-called gig economy's growing by leaps and bounds, as the conventional job market continues to crater, but it's not driving any greater growth in earning power, nor personal satisfaction. It's harder and harder to square the slogans that these outfits constantly tout ("Do as much or as little as you want," "Work in your pajamas") with the relentless race to the bottom that they actually practice ("If you don't like it, you can't leave," "Your account can be closed any time"), because that's the only way their business model works. Or can work. Either way, it doesn't work for you.

This struggle cuts both ways. Last year, I watched a longtime friend hang up his journalistic hat; two decades of low pay and little advancement will do that. He decided to seek a regular job instead, a possibility that has yet to materialize after a year of elevator pitches, endless shuffling of resumes, and various related trips to job fairs, and support groups. The problem, of course, is that he's one among millions of fiftysomethings out of work at this point. No one's hiring them.

I'm experiencing my share of aggravation lately, as well. I'm trying to boost my overall rating on one transcript site, and reclaim the top tier, where the best work, pay-wise and quality-wise (such as it is) exists. I had a bad run of three niggling grades that pushed me into the middle tier, and its less desirable discards. (There's also a bottom tier, for the rookies, where I've seen the odd person or two get busted. We won't imagine how that experience feels.)

The way these sites operate, it takes forever to work those lesser grades off, forcing you to dedicate more time than you really want to spend on them. (So much for the claims of not having to squat on Bid Site X every day, right?) And you have to get extremely nitpicky about the work you do, because you don't want to fall further down the rabbit hole. Thankfully, it's not the only thing I do, but right now, I'm thinking of taking a week or so off from that particular rat race. Getting dinged, after putting in a couple grueling all nighters, will do that to you.


<"Bring The Machine Home,
Take II"/The Reckoner>


<iii.>
I don't only have Vince Gill to thank for my inspiration on this post. The other source came from watching a PBS "American Masters" special, late at night, on John Lennon's connections to New York City, and how it influenced his activism, as well as his art. Among the clips is a brief one from an April 22, 1972 peace rally that he and Yoko attended, where he said something that caught my attention: 

"We're here to bring the boys home, but let's not forget the machine! Bring the machine home, and then we'll really get somewhere."

Obviously, at that moment, Lennon was talking about ending the Vietnam War, and pulling the plug on American involvement there. But the last part of his statement, "Bring the machine home," has wider implications. I also see it meaning, "bring our technology closer to home, in a way that works better for us." I'm thinking of Point #5 in the White Panther Party Platform, in particular, which still rings true today: "Free access to the information media -- free the technology from the greed creeps!"

The greed creeps have never done better, as the pandemic is showing us. Relevant examples include Etsy, the online portal for handmade goods, whose second quarter earnings report showed a total gross profit of $317.4 million, and total revenues of $428.7 million. Those figures, released in August, reflected increases of 159.1 and 136.7 percent, respectively. 

That's a thrilling outcome for those sitting in the boardroom, but less so for the community relying on it for some kind of income. It's a dynamic that's guaranteed to keep our collective earning power flowing somewhere else, helping to make an all-powerful entity even more overweening, and less responsive. 

Just imagine how much better off we could make ourselves, if we took even 10 percent of that $300- or $400-some million, and put it into our own DIY ventures -- like a co-op, for example, run by the workers involved, instead of some anonymous digital platform lorded over by some faceless anonymous middlemouth. Now there's a thought, eh?

On the plus side, Etsy supports Black Lives Matter as "the civil rights movement of our time," and has donated $1 million to causes like the Equal Justice Initiative, making them a tad less greedy and creepy. But even so, I find it odd that in the 21st century, we're still run along the same unforgiving lines of the 15th, with some overweening overdog wielding life or death power over the serfs who worked the land, even as it slowly worked them to an early death.

Monopoly money also brings monopoly power. As Free Code Camp reports (see below), half of all Internet traffic now flows to just 30 websites (emphasis mine), with the remaining half spread across some 60 trillion unique web pages that Google indexes. I imagine this is why I've seen a drop in my own monthly website traffic lately, from 20,000-25,000 to 15,000-17,000 monthly page views. The same story holds for other notable categories, like online advertising, where Facebook and Google account for 85% of all new dollars being spent there. The rest fight fiercely for the rest of the crumbs, as the race to the bottom accelerates. Wash, rinse, repeat.


<"Bring The Machine Home,
Take III"/The Reckoner>

<Coda>
To some degree, this is a chicken and egg question. "Which came first?" I'm tempted to ask myself. "The day jobs that barely paid enough to make to ends meet, or the 'gig jobs' that don't pay enough, and don't pretend to?" 

Neither model serves our needs, leaving us trapped in a world of binary Tweedledee-or-Tweedledum (non) choices. Psst. Hey, kid! You want AT&T or Verizon? Chocolate or vanilla? Democrats or Republicans? Food or medicine? Medicare only, or sliding scale fees? You know the drill. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Or, as Bernie Sanders so bluntly put it, when he ran for President: Americans don't only want a choice between Aetna and CIGNA. We can do better than the standard binary paradigms that the world continues to offer. 

That begins by realizing how much buying power we have, and finding better places to funnel it, as Michael Bloomberg did, by sinking $16 million into a fund that aims to help former Florida prison inmates fully pay all their fines and costs, as the state demands, and reclaim their voting rights. That's real power, and will make a real difference in those ex-offenders' lives.

Obviously, most of us don't have anywhere near $16 million, but that's not the point. For a start, we can still make better decisions about whom and what to support with our existing energy and money. That thought occurred to me when I stumbled across a multi-part podcast series aimed at zinemakers, including outlets to sell them. Sounds great, I thought. I can use that info. Let's see what they've got.

Unfortunately, the "resources" turned out to be the usual suspects, like Etsy, where the podcaster focuses their 'zine sales -- and, not surprisingly, directed much of their ire. To top it all off, the podcast site opened with a royalty free musical greeting, a gesture that totally undercuts their own message. How can you bitch about Etsy fees, I asked myself, when you're OK with screwing the pooch for yet another musician? 

But swapping one bid site for another isn't the answer. Shifting priorities from Etsy to Fiverr to Scribie to Submittable to Upwork and back again, or some equally closed loop, isn't the revolution I have in mind. Finding alternatives that empower real people in real life is, and that's the prize we should all focus on achieving. 

Time will tell what those alternatives look like, or how they'll take hold, but getting that discussion going -- and keeping it going -- is the first step in forming bigger and better ideas that lead to action. Like the man said, bring the machine home. Then we'll really get somewhere. --The Reckoner


Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry,
Before Some Algorithm Punishes You Again):

Business Insider

CNET
Four Memorable Moments
From The Congressional Hearing On Big Tech:

Free Code Camp
The Future Of The Open Internet
Is In Your Hands:

Think Globally Act Locally:
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