i don't know how to write this without sounding like whoever/whatever it is that hipster runoff is parodying/imitating ("what kind of 'moment' do yall think we r 'in' right now?"), but this is something i've been thinking over for the past few months.
i don't think anyone would argue that we're going through a large shift in consumer attitudes and taste, which is coinciding with an explosion of at-your-fingertips independent art/music/video. these two phenomena are caught in a sort of feedback loop, and for the moment, it seems to be great news for everyone other than the entertainment dinosaurs who were built to make money in the pre-internet age.
like any other human, i seek historical precedent when it comes to understanding and interpreting current events, but modern history ("modern" = anything after the birth of radio, in my mind) doesn't have a true precedent for the great cultural scramble that the internet and its billions of contributors have unleashed.
the dawn of the television age isn't a useful comparison, i don't think. television is a domineering medium, perfect for fascists -- that is to say, it tells you and shows you, and you must watch and listen. you can turn off the set, but in doing so, you're making a conscious choice to reject the culture that everyone else is embracing, and that mass mega-culture had no real alternatives (until the beatniks inspired the folkies and the folkies inspired the hippies and the beatles got involved and the counterculture exploded, but that's what happens when you have a crushing monoculture and a bumper crop of privileged kids, i guess). anyway, the point is, television is one-way, the very opposite of a democratic medium.
the internet is, of course, the very model of a democratic medium. we've never really had one of these. well, that's not true -- there is historical precedent, but one has to reach way back across the centuries to locate it. the closest i can think of is the explosion of printed materials in the renaissance following the invention of the printing press; this democratization of words and ideas (most crucially, scientific, philosophical, religious and mathematical ideas) was directly responsible for the revolution in western thought known as the Age of Enlightenment.
is this happening again? i like to hope that it is. the availability of information and opinions from unlimited sources and viewpoints can't be anything but a cultural benefit. from what i've observed, certain communities (left-leaning blogs, say) begin trading information and insights very quickly, forming groups that are collectively more intelligent than the sum of their parts. this is happening globally, across every culture, within every category and clique that people choose to identify with.
music (and entertainment in general) is/are being democratized so rapidly that it's nearly impossible to keep up with everything--new music breeds new blogs breed new readers breed new musicians breed new music and on and on. it has the earmarks of a bubble, i suppose, but human creativity isn't a business, and the human creative capacity is without a foreseeable limit, so i don't see any reason to worry (unless you're a record company exec of course!).
massive cultural shifts don't feel so massive when they're happening, but in 20 years time, and certainly in 100 years time, i wonder if people won't look back on this moment as a global renaissance of sorts -- a renaissance not just of music and art and entertainment, but of science and ideas and self-actualization. during the first renaissance, and the first enlightenment, ideas were accessible, and so was art and music and all the rest -- but these were far more accessible if you were part of the landed gentry (that is, if you had a ton of money for leisure and study). the internet has the potential to remove virtually all impediments to human advancement, if one believes (as i do) that exposure to new ideas and new cultures is the starting point for any such advancement.
anyway, it's an incredible time to be alive.
