I'm interested in the way the whole cultural landscape can shift over time. Okay, this will seem like a silly example, but look at the whole discourse around "selling out," a concept people say is irrelevant because there's no more distinction between mainstream and underground, inside and outside (which I don't really believe, but that's another issue).
Astra TaylorWe've been criticizing these superficial aspects, like whether we are all more distracted. We really need to articulate a defense, a critique, that merges awareness of the technology with a more traditional, progressive, left-wing critique of the market.
Astra TaylorAs an individual navigating this reality, you have to make choices to survive. Sometimes you happily work for free if it's something you love and believe in. I'm not categorically saying that working for free is bad. I'm just looking at the broader implications of it, and also challenge this idea - and again, this is an argument made by certain people in the tech world - that amateurs are automatically more pure and will triumph over stodgy professionals.
Astra TaylorUltimately, the current argument is "not having net neutrality will hurt innovation," and you can make that argument, but I would rather make the public good argument, which is not just about innovation or nurturing new companies that will add to the nation's GDP, it's actually about creating a democratic public sphere.
Astra TaylorMy point, though, is that if lines have indeed shifted, it's not so much that the younger generation just doesn't care, it's that we have ceded more and more of our public life over to the private sector. If you grow up with advertising at school, you have come of age in a sold-out world.
Astra TaylorAdvertisers are happy to see the stuff they've branded out there for free, they don't care about scarcity, they want any message they're invested in to be shared and to be abundant and to be passed along.
Astra TaylorI was shocked when I tried to articulate this to someone who had posted the film and asked them to remove it for a few months, and I actually told them that after that they could put it back up and they were just completely unwilling to compromise - you'd think I was Rupert Murdoch or something.
Astra Taylor