Filling in the Void of Potentiality with Reality
After making my way through Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, a certain Despair, Inc. demotivator poster came to mind:
Humor aside, there is a surprising truth about the statement. A large group of amateurs can have the power to compete at the level of professionals in the same field. The amateurs just need a suite of tools and platforms to be able to collaborate and share their pool of talents and resources. This is why the explosion of publishing occurred after the invention of the printing press and after the advent of online amateur publishing through social media and blogs. Before these tools, we relied on dedicated professionals to do the publishing of information for us. Nowadays, anyone can do it for much cheaper.
I recall an interesting personal experience with this power that can come from online amateur collaboration. Since 2010, Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir project has been creating a worldwide choir without its members ever meeting together in person to rehearse. The basic idea is to allow anyone in the world to submit a video of themselves singing the harmony part of an agreed-upon song. The videos are then aggregated and published together, making an impressive performance out of everyone's contribution. The most recent production of the Virtual Choir broke an incredible amount of barriers (5,905-person choir representing 101 countries). It also fit right in with the musical quality of a professional choir.
There is a high potential of latent groups such as the Virtual Choir. The invention of social media and amateur publishing outlets has finally made it possible for the world to make these potentialities a reality.
Humor aside, there is a surprising truth about the statement. A large group of amateurs can have the power to compete at the level of professionals in the same field. The amateurs just need a suite of tools and platforms to be able to collaborate and share their pool of talents and resources. This is why the explosion of publishing occurred after the invention of the printing press and after the advent of online amateur publishing through social media and blogs. Before these tools, we relied on dedicated professionals to do the publishing of information for us. Nowadays, anyone can do it for much cheaper.
I recall an interesting personal experience with this power that can come from online amateur collaboration. Since 2010, Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir project has been creating a worldwide choir without its members ever meeting together in person to rehearse. The basic idea is to allow anyone in the world to submit a video of themselves singing the harmony part of an agreed-upon song. The videos are then aggregated and published together, making an impressive performance out of everyone's contribution. The most recent production of the Virtual Choir broke an incredible amount of barriers (5,905-person choir representing 101 countries). It also fit right in with the musical quality of a professional choir.
There is a high potential of latent groups such as the Virtual Choir. The invention of social media and amateur publishing outlets has finally made it possible for the world to make these potentialities a reality.
Comments
Post a Comment