Steve Greenlaw sends me a link to a fascinating Wired column by William Gibson: “God’s Little Toys.” Here’s my response (query: why doesn’t Wired permit comments on their essays?).

My initial thoughts are two. Gibson’s right about God’s little toys. I feel exactly the same way about the audio work I’ve done with tape and now with the computer, and word processing has always seemed like magic to me. Gibson’s take on recombinant or remix culture is also very compelling. The problem here, as is always the case with remix evangelists, is that a weird implication emerges: in the future, there will be no authors, and no authority. Instead, mass-produced culture will magically be reformed by clusters of users into either compelling or faddish new stuff that we’ll all go “woo” for.

I don’t believe that for a second.

A person’s sensibilities will always be the most potent remix engine of all, and when those sensibilities filter, mix, and reforge a new creation, the world will turn its attention to that person. Not that group or that culture or that demographic. That person. Of course that person will have made his or her collage out of everything else in the world. That’s the way creativity has always worked, and must work. No one invents the material of the world or a culture or a language out of whole cloth. In this respect, remix culture is a sped-up and amplified version of what has been going on since civilization emerged. But it is not something new–and in fact this is a point that Lawrence Lessig always emphasizes when he advocates copyright reform.

The remix always makes something, and that something is not just a remix. The album is not dead. The song is not dead. (Terrible truth: mashups are often boring, and even the good ones are no substitute for the songs themselves–more like an interesting mini-essay on music.) The novel is not dead. The essay is not dead. The author is not dead. King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry are one way to make art; they’re not the paradigm of the new and only way to make art. (The fact that Gibson names them–and that their names mean something in terms of identifiable practice–supports my point.) Audiences are not “passive” (what a very strange idea–where does that come from?), and they’re not going away. Gibson’s enthusiasm is understandable, but his argument is inconsistent with his own practice, and it does not do justice to the complexities of history or contemporary culture. Unless we can think more clearly about these issues, we’re just taking a ride on the Eternal Pendulum. (Like most teachers, I am officially committed to the belief that such pendulum-riding is not inevitable, though I understand its likelihood is always very strong.)

But this essay is still required reading, if only because Gibson blurs the usual boundaries between images, sounds, and text. That blurring may be the most significant practice to emerge from the new digital culture we inhabit. It’s also one that deserves more attention than it’s yet received. I’d like to read Gibson on that topic.