{"id":1128,"date":"2008-02-14T08:53:34","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T16:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2008\/02\/balancing_the_masses_and_the_e\/"},"modified":"2008-02-14T08:53:34","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T16:53:34","slug":"balancing_the_masses_and_the_e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/balancing_the_masses_and_the_e.php","title":{"rendered":"Balancing the masses and the elite"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social-networking maven Kevin Kelly posts some fascinating thoughts<\/a> on the past and future of user-generated content systems (Wikipedia, distributed networks, smart mobs, blogs, and such). At issue is how such systems balance the aggregated, bottom-up insights of non-experts against the editing, filtering, curating, and clarifying energy of top-down, ”elite” content managers.<\/p>\n

We all know by now that the traditional model — where a few, favored individuals and institutions select, craft, and distribute content through authorized channels — is turning upside-down. That flip is what’s making traditional cultural institutions so nervous, and nudging established cultural gatekeepers to scan the want ads. But Kelly warns that purely bottom-up systems can’t get us where we want to go, either.<\/p>\n

Rather, he says, it’s the balance of mass insight against thoughtful selection, design, and direction that defines the new frontier. We won’t end up on either side of that equation, just dancing around the middle.<\/p>\n

Even that bastion of the hive mind, Wikipedia<\/a>, is not a purely distributed network of non-expert content creators. Rather, it’s a mass-input device structured and manipulated by a different kind of editor. Says Kelly:<\/p>\n


\n…a close inspection of Wikipedia’s process reveals that it has an elite at its center, (and that it does have an elite center is news to most). Turns out there is far more deliberate top-down design management going on than first appears. This is why Wikipedia has worked in such a short time.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How does this relate to arts and cultural management? In almost every way. Our professional cultural institutions were primarily built on the traditional model of content creation, development, selection, and delivery. A handful of highly skilled and aesthetically (or economically) elite individuals defined what we do, and determined who would get to do it (providing centuries of extraordinary results, I might add). But now that the world is shifting to a more bottom-up, participatory, and mass-insight infrastructure, our way of working has become increasingly awkward and anachronistic.<\/p>\n

Kelly suggests that the solution is not<\/i> to swing entirely toward the hive mind, nor to abandon the role of curator, editor, expert, or even elite. The solution is in bringing our artful eye toward rethinking the system itself:<\/p>\n


\nThe real art of business and organizations in the network economy will not be in harnessing the crowd of “everybody” (simple!) but in finding the appropriate hybrid mix of bottom and top for each niche, at the right time.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let the hybrids begin!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social-networking maven Kevin Kelly posts some fascinating thoughts on the past and future of user-generated content systems (Wikipedia, distributed networks, smart mobs, blogs, and such). At issue is how such systems balance the aggregated, bottom-up insights of non-experts against the editing, filtering, curating, and clarifying energy of top-down, ”elite” content managers. We all know by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}