In my last post I talked about how technology seems to be making a run at human intelligence. Well, that may be so, but I am also seeing that people have an amazing ability to adapt to the new situations and realities created by these technological advances. Look at music, for instance. Over and over again, I have heard people expressing a fear that digitizing music, and the introduction of downloading music, has had a negative effect on the art form. The argument is that, advances in technology have made it more difficult for artists to get paid for recorded music. I don’t argue that fact, it is clear that the ability to download and distribute music (and news, and anything else that can be broken down into 1’s and 0’s) has made it very difficult to get paid for the content produced. However, I would argue that the ability of individuals to easily create and distribute creative content has actually had a positive influence on our culture and on various art forms.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and befriending some of the most amazing and talented people around. Some of these amazing people are shining examples of our ability to adapt to this technology-saturated world. In my opinion, these adaptations have had, in many cases, an amazingly positive effect on all of our lives. While the advent of digital music has made it more difficult to get paid for recording music, it also pushed us to find better and cheaper ways to record music. This, in my opinion, has had a beautifully democratizing effect on the musical landscape. There are now so many ways to create music cheaply, and more channels to distribute it, that it has brought the “camp-fire” back to our lives again. Just as everyone in a village would sit around and share their music with the community, now more than ever before, people have the ability to share their music and creativity with the world in ways we could have only dreamed of just a few years ago. For instance, even I have recorded a song. Now, maybe that is not a particularly positive effect :) but, I think that the fact that even I have the ability to share my music with others in this way is amazing. It may be more difficult to become a “rock star” in this climate, but I think the overall effect on music and other types of creative endeavors has been positive.

Let me give you a few examples of my friend’s awesome projects that may not have been possible without these new technologies.

Mpls.tv: This is an amazing re-imagining of what public access TV can become. A friend from college, Chris Cloud, and an apparently amazing group of creative thinkers has come together to promote and showcase the city of Minneapolis’ creativity, in all its forms.

Fishdoctor: This is a music project put together by some of my friends in Brooklyn. They created these tracks all in their bedroom! Pretty great stuff.

Breakoutband: This is a project that allows people to create their own music online.

I actually helped them create this video and they ended up as finalists in promotional contest. They are now at SXSW in Austin to show off their project.

Readygoes: I remember Bryan Shackle taking me to the Readygoes practice room in a warehouse where they were actually mixing their own tracks.

Derek Olson: My college friend Derek Olson has been able to create his own movies and music videos and distribute them without the help of a big studio.

Funkanomics: When I was living in New York, I took classes at the amazingly awesome UCB theater. There I met some awesome people who have subsequently co-founded a comedy troop called Funkanomics.

These are just a few examples and I apologize to my other friends who have projects that should probably be included here. It's not that these talented people would not have found other ways to share their creativity, had there not been these new technologies available, but I for one am glad that they had these tools available. It has undoubtedly allowed them to share that creatively with a broader audience...including myself.