Neil Turkewitz
Jul 27, 2017 · 1 min read

Well said Mike. Excellent piece. You may be interested in this piece that I wrote in response to Ev Williams’ post articulating a new vision for Medium. I explore many of the same themes.

https://medium.com/@nturkewitz_56674/you-write-we-decided-we-needed-to-take-a-different-and-bolder-approach-to-this-problem-49ca0b041524?source=linkShare-89807c3fc929-1501166120

“If we want to return value to creators, we must address the artificial ubiquity which undermines the ability of creators to realize economic returns as they are forced to compete with unauthorized versions of their own works. To restore the fundamental concept that the means of distribution does not upend the normative principles of society — that “cyberspace” is not, as John Perry Barlow has suggested, an independent state governed by a form of techno-determinism and not by man. We don’t just owe this to artists and writers — we owe it to ourselves. The protection of art (and one can not divorce art from the conditions of the artist) will play a large part in determining the conditions of our existence in a rapidly changing environment. Will we expand choice or contract it? Will we capture the potential of digital technologies to expand economic opportunities for creators and thereby fuel creativity and cultural diversity, or will our actions be governed by mere technological capacity? Society can ill afford to take the wrong paths on these core issues.”