Originally Posted by
paulr
It wouldn't surprise me if things have gotten somewhat worse. Still, the devaluation of creative people (the "content creation class") seems to me like a very broad cultural phenomenon, and it's myopic (not to mention pointless) to blame it all on a new camera technology.
I really think the unspoken anxiety here is about turf. When you're a "sorcerer," job security comes from your magical / expensive tools and the arcane knowledge needed to use them. Any democratization of technology is threatening to the sorcerer class.
Some of this threat is a good thing: opportunities open up to a greater range of people, including ones who (for economic reasons) never would have had the chance to compete. The market gets tipped toward being a meritocracy.
And some of the threat is bad. Clients realize they can get the job done for next to nothing, so many of them lose interest in paying to get it done well. So at the high end of the market, there are more people competing for less work, while at the low end, there's a near infinity of people competing for work that barely pays.
The impression that "digital has ruined everything" seems to be held by people whose main asset was their technical skills or the stuff they owned. This is always a precarious position. People with real vision are much better able to roll with the punches, and even grow with them. Unfortunately the current cultural and economic climate punches a lot!
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