Why nerd culture must die

Thank you Pete Warden for the article Why nerd culture must die

As a musician/composer heavily reliant on copyright as a means of at least some form of power in relationship to my clients (tv production companies and tv stations mostly) and as a tech lover (since my days on the C64 who never really went into science, coding or engineering because music was the bigger love for me) for the past 10 years I’ve experienced the “wrath of the internet” first hand and in painful personal attacks. And what hurts most was, that I felt the dreams painted by the geeks where my dreams (open culture, removing the middle men, direct access) but then the geeks started to actively destroy my professional field (the one that lets me provide for my family) and at the same time ignored the writings on the wall (the steady decline in revenue and the loss of the middle class musician/composer due to piracy).

There was mockery, victim blaming, talk of a “new business model” that nobody really defined. Not even the really smart people in tech managed to come up with a “new model” that actually works for the lower and middle class musicians. For them, the best solution is still to sell an album (digital or physical) for roughly ten bucks.

Throughout those last 10 years the “ignoring outsiders and believing in ourselves” that I deeply admire and that I feel I`m a part of in my field has built up such a high barrier between otherwise like minded people (nerds and musicians are always visionaries, they recognize things that most people don’t). Even though I have built up a strong resistance for it, it still hurts the sensitive side in me.

Let us work on bridging that gap.

 

 

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