the human network

I've just been reading articles on the human network blog by Mark Pesce. all have been interesting, particularly the Unevenly Distributed : Production Models for the 21st Century where he talks about the death of television and film industries in their current distribution method. also mentioned were the examples of Ronda Byrne's online / streaming version of The Secret and the success it has brought her. as well as the "League of Peers" movie Steal this Film - Part 1 which is a documentary about file sharing and the troubles faced by Sweden's leading BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay.

another article I read last month (when I couldn't post to the site), was the Kevin Kelley article "1,000 True Fans" from his Technium blog.

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

...

To raise your sales out of the flatline of the long tail you need to connect with your True Fans directly. Another way to state this is, you need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It
rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

sounds easy enough doesn't it ;)

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Kelly also has an interesting article called Humanity's Identity Crises where he asks a couple of questions previously asked by science fiction author Philip K Dick during a 1978 speech.

"The two basic topics which fascinate me are "What is reality?" and "What constitutes the authentic human being?" Over the twenty-seven years in which I have published novels and stories I have investigated these two interrelated topics over and over again. I consider them important topics. What are we? What is it which surrounds us, that we call the not-me, or the empirical or phenomenal world?"

amazing how everything seems to be looping back to the courses and topics at the Maybe Logic Academy lately (well, actually for a while ...)

what does it mean to be human? is it the personal connections you have with others? the amount of things you learn? our physiology? our minds? our hearts? our consciousness? the human connections and networks (as mentioned on the blogs above)? what we think of? what we do? where we work??

another article :
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business by Chris Anderson