We Live in Public now
Shortly after yesterday's post about Michael Arrington appeared here, an e-mail from Jason Calacanis arrived in the inbox with "We Live in Public (and the end of empathy)" in the subject line. It's a disturbing mail, the assault on Arrington in Munich is mentioned, and there are lots of rueful observations along these lines: "We're harvesting our lives and putting them online. We're addicted to gaining followers and friends (or email subscribers, as the case may be), and reading comments we get in return. As we look for validation and our daily 15 minutes of fame, we do so at the cost of our humanity."
Later, when Mrs Rainy Day was reading A VC, she mentioned that Fred had posted about the Sundance Festival award-winning documentary We Live in Public, the message of which is central to Jason Calacanis' post and, we'd venture, Michael Arrington's predicament. Here's the trailer.
The clip ends with Harris in apocalyptic mood: "The lions and tigers were kings of the jungle; then one day they wound up in zoos. I suggest we're on the same track." Too grim? Well, in the film Josh Harris talks to camera and, anticipating reality TV, says "I am just a product to be harvested." We can dismiss him as a crank now but 15 years ago he was predicting that lives would be lived on the web, and in public. As David Carr notes, he also foretold that "the Internet would become the platform of choice for all media, much of which would be generated by the people formerly known as the audience." But it all comes with a price tag.
