Disintermediation: Difference between revisions

Suddenly, aspiring but ungifted novelists could publish their ''[[The Montenegro Sanction|bildungsromane]]'' direct into the teeth of a cruel world suddenly drowning in the sodding things, circumventing the galling disinterest of publishers who until then had guarded those gates of acclamation.  

From nowhere, dreary middle-aged men could atone for the profligacy with which they wasted their own youths by recording, mixing and distributing their ''own'' dreary pop songs to the studied indifference of every soul on this barren rock, including their own families, not that they’re bitter or anything,<ref>I refer to none other than [[Dangerboy]], of course.</ref> and have them at least ''sound like'' real pop music. No recording studio or record label required.  

 

 

The digital revolution was, for those at the wrong end of the [[agency problem]] — a class of people generally called “[[client]]s” —a moment of beatific liberation — but only a fleeting one. It became clear that the same barrier whose collapse allowed ''them'' into this lush meadow of direct market access allowed ''every other bastard'' to rush in, too. This turned said lush meadow into a [[Tragedy of the commons|tragic]] [[digital commons]].<ref>There wasn’t ''meant'' to be any “tragedy” in the [[digital commons]], of course. But it turns out the scarce resource is not supply-side bandwidth — the good people at Amazon Web Services have got our backs on that — but demand-side ''attention and money''.</ref> Chris Anderson’s [[The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More|long tail]] of hopeful aspiration — a supply for every demand; a demand for any supply! — morphed into a ghoulish chem-trail of worthless pap that ''no-one'' wanted to buy. The world was at once awash with quadrophonic noise.