Patton Oswalt made waves in December, writing an article for Wired which suggested the Internet was destroying geek culture. His thesis was that in his teen days it took months, even years to build up the knowledge of popular culture to become an expert.
Now, to his chagrin, you can do so by visiting Wikipedia, by downloading a series of albums on ITunes or watch a director’s full filmography on Netflix. If geek knowledge can’t be exclusive to a chosen few, he suggests, then pop culture as a whole must be dying.
The problem with his theory is that it ignores a central tenet of Internet culture: that information should be free to anyone who seeks it. Such ease of access sets the record industry and film moguls on edge. They’ve existed to profit off the creative efforts of others for decades, seeing no reason to change the status quo, even if it means their imminent demise through stagnation.
But what makes this generation so amazing is that the information of the world can be found and studied instantly by anyone. Even those who lack the money needed to become an expert on something in a short period of time.
When I was in high school, discovering great music meant having friends who already had the music, allowing me to hear it and absorb it before I had to spend months saving up money to actually buy it.
When I reached college age, Napster was a golden beacon. Suddenly I could find like-minded music fans and download music they recommended, absorbing it and becoming a true fan of the music.
I still bought a great deal of music during that era. Even when I’d fill a hard drive with unknown indie artists’ music, I was able to target my listening and focus in on music I otherwise never would have heard. Then I’d see those bands live in concert, buying future albums whenever they were released.
Many of the artists whose music I heard during that time would never have been exposed to me otherwise. Much of this music was from bands few in my small town had heard. I went from being a slave to whatever happened to be popular amongst my peers to being a true music explorer, free to learn what I enjoyed, even if that meant immersing myself in hip-hop for a month in a downloading binge.
Now the youth of the world have a broader wealth of immediately attainable information at their fingertips than I ever could have dreamed of ten years ago. And unlike Patton Oswalt, I think that’s the best thing to happen to our culture. Where three decades ago those with the wealth made the decisions about what would be heard – radio, anyone? – now the Internet allows us all to be experts on what we truly want to hear, and therefore we actually get the freedom to shift the direction of the entertainment world.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what these new experts choose to do with it.
