Taking I.T. into your own hands

[This post was originally inspired by some seemingly unrelated articles on ArtsJournal and elsewhere- and I've let them sit and fester for a while before I tried to tie it all together.]

There's a growing resistance to traditional arts forms and institutions, where (because?) other people determine the value of a particular art, publication, performance, etc.

We saw it in the recording industry, where not only music "consumers" but even musicians themselves wanted to more direct access to each other, and wanted to avoid the gatekeepers (who are portrayed more business-minded than quality-minded).

We can see recursive layers of resistance to "authoritarian"-seeming structures in the ongoing evolution of Burning Man - the event and the organization.

Couple this trend with news that traditional venues for developing, producing and promoting arts get cut, and what do you do?

Well, you DIY. Despite what people may think of you.

This is not new. This happens in cycles, throughout history. Sometimes it's called a revolution, sometimes it's called a cultural shift.

And when you have computers, we see a new fold in this time-honored trend -

You techno-DIY.

We saw it happen with the advent of VCRs and CD players.

We see something happening with museums, where their pay-for-"our"-interpretation programs are being usurped by Podcasting.

(My preferred term is the full "techno-DIY" - only 28 Google matches as of 6/9/06, including some interesting ones.... And of course, the "interference" with posts about techno music....)

Something tells me this also ties in with the concept of a mediated culture, but my threads above are tenous as it is...