Ones
and Zeroes
by
Anne M Carley
We live
in interesting times. Not so long ago, a dollar was a dollar. Dollars could
be traded for goods and services. People who had accumulated many dollars
could increase their standard of living, and exert control over those with
fewer dollars. The arts were too often considered nonessential luxuries for
the "haves" of the world. Then came digital information. Then
came the Internet.
We are
witnesses to an important transformation. Money, after a long process of
growing abstraction, from precious metals to paper money, through credit
cards to the ones and zeroes of binary cash, has become information. At the
same time information is becoming our "money": the new currency
of digital data to which nearly every expression can or will be reduced.
All
dollars are the same, and more of them is generally considered a good
thing. On the other hand, not all information has the same value. With ones
and zeroes, we are more selective. As digital junk, interchangeable with so
much other digital junk, clogs the pipeline, isn't it likely we will place
increasingly higher value on non-interchangeable material, like opinion,
point of view, imagination - things that often manifest as creative
artforms?
The
Internet, the giant global bazaar for these binary exchanges, is already
influencing communications and commerce, and it can soon be exerting much
more influence in the arts, diffusing "content" to traditional as
well as underserved communities in this country and around the world. The
Internet is able to provide writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers,
performers, dancers, actors, poets, and all the rest, a sturdier sense of
interconnection without regard to time zones, national borders, or
political alliances. At this moment, creative works and their makers and
sponsors have a spectacular opportunity to reach a world audience while
changing our economic model for the arts.
Creative
output, instruction and problem-solving - and the methods for locating them
in the vast digital universe - will only become more valuable, unlike other
more interchangeable forms of informational currency.
The
opposition of arts versus technology is a construct hurtling toward
obsolescence. Why not encourage its demise, replacing it with more
practical approaches likely to benefit more people and institutions? If
these approaches can also put money in the pockets of the artists, so much
the better. We can cross-pollinate with partners in other areas of
expertise and with complementary resources, to provide effective,
non-legislated ideas and solutions.
We can
also identify business and government entities whose missions overlap the
arts' - to share available technologies and expertise in ways that benefit
all concerned. An obvious example is the current international effort to
establish reliable authentication methods so that ecommerce can thrive.
(How do I know you are who you say you are? How do I know you really have
authority at this bank to approve this loan?) Artists, riding the coattails
of the international business community, may soon be able to avail
themselves of first-rate authentication technologies, to assure their
audiences that the work on the Internet is the actual work: the entire
work, as posted by the artist or artists who made it.
We
don't have to wait passively to see what happens next, so that we'll have
something new to grumble about. We have chances now at this threshold
moment to help determine what happens next. We can ask questions. We can
establish and maintain bridges between the arts and technology. We can
express our concerns to those who may be able to suggest - even build with
us - pragmatic solutions.
Earlier
in this decade, there was no listing in the New York City Yellow Pages
under "Internet." In 1999, the Internet, already a major force,
is still in its infancy. During this period of expansion and definition,
perhaps we can allow its possibilities to percolate, register, and
transmute. Perhaps we can help shape its future, so that the Internet will
mature as an invaluable resource for cultural exchange, global education,
and group creativity.
The
technologies of the Internet show no sign of slowing their pace toward
continued development, refinement, and ubiquity. Why not keep up with the
pace? Why not even set the pace, proposing to the technologists ideas that
are not quite workable at present, and joining forces to advance the
technology to suit the art?
If all
ones and zeroes are created equal, some, in combinations, are more equal
than others. Who is to say that the binary information representing a work
of art is somehow less worthy, or less likely to travel around the world
into paying users' computers, than the binary information of an Internet
advertisement for chocolate covered coffee beans? If
artists and arts organizations embrace this chance to effect some of the
changes that are jiggling the world's economic and power balances, a lot
can be gained. New digital wealth, in the forms of treasured, artistic
information, can touch lives around the world. Happily, while traditional
economies have rested on a carefully limited supply of currency, our supply
of digital currency is infinite.
Anne
M Carley,
editor of the Arts4All Newsletter, began her arts management business,
Silent Partner Consulting, in 1982 after five years as a manager at the Dia
Art Foundation (now the Dia Center for the Arts). In 1991 she earned
her law degree from New York University School of Law. Ms. Carley
also writes, speaks and teaches on topics at the intersections of the arts,
technology, philanthropy, law and policy.
