the gift, the artist, and the net | THE STATE

In last week?s post, I referred to the internet as a .gif(t) economy. I didn?t coin the term. That honor goes to my editor, Rahel. I am sure that if I?d been writing a book or a paper, I would have credited her with a footnote. But as I blogged, questions of attribution didn?t enter my mind. I thought only to free a clever phrase from my Gchat archive. Which proves the truth of the term. On the internet, what matters is less who or where a phrase or meme or blog post comes from and more that it is shared. To cease to be retweeted, on the internet, is to die.

So when I say the internet is a gift economy, I don?t just mean that many of us read and watch and write and post for free. I mean that the way content changes hands on the internet works more like a potlatch than the stock market.

I started thinking of the internet in this way after reading Lewis Hyde?s The Gift, a modern classic that describes the artistic process using the anthropological literature on gift exchange. Gift exchanges, says Hyde, paraphrasing Marcel Mauss, create ?the obligation to give, the obligation to accept, and the obligation to reciprocate.? The gift must always be kept in motion. If you?re a one of the Uduk people in northeast Africa, for example, and someone gives you a goat, you can kill the goat and throw a big party, or you can give the goat?s milk to your neighbors, but you can?t use the goat to start an artisanal cheese business. ?One man?s gift ? must not be another man?s capital.?

Another example Hyde offers is the Kula gift exchange practiced by the Massim people in the South Pacific. Two items circulate in constant, ceremonial exchange: red shell necklaces move clockwise and armshells move counter-clockwise. You are obligated to give an armshell and receive a necklace in return, then pass the necklace on in the other direction. If one person refuses to give, the circle, and the community it creates, breaks.

A similar motion starts when someone posts a blog or uploads a video on YouTube. For that initial gift to matter in the online world, someone else must give in response. This response might mean passing the original gift along to friends and coworkers via a link on Twitter or Facebook. Or it might mean responding with a comment or blog post of your own. But to be part of the online community you must move the gift somehow. The three worst things you can be in internet speak are a troll, a lurker, or a spammer. The troll, by verbally spitting in the giver?s face, refuses to accept the gift; the lurker, by consuming without responding, refuses to reciprocate; the spammer disrupts the flow of gifts by trying to sell commodities?objects that are bought and kept by one.

Hyde also explains that the act of giving increases the value of the gift. Among North Pacific indigenous groups, the bones of the first salmon are returned to the sea so that the salmon will return plentiful next year; ceremonial copper plaques are given in exchange for more and more blankets every potlatch. The value of internet gifts also increases as they circulate. What everyone wants is for their offering to go viral. The more times a meme is repeated, the more of a meme it is.

As I mentioned in my last post, internet gifts can also build on each other. Someone posts a .gif on a database site, the women behind #whatshouldwecallme pair it with a clever phrase, their pairing makes the rounds on Facebook, inspiring someone else to start #whatshouldwecallcats, and soon there are enough spinoffs that BuzzFeed writes an article about the phenomenon. That first .gif(t) has born fruit; it is the basket of loaves and fishes that, because it was offered freely, grows to feed the multitudes.

But it was second half of Hyde?s Gift, the half that discusses the artistic process, that actually made me think of the internet as a site of giving. Every artist, he says, participates in a spiritual gift economy. In a foundational moment, they receive inspiration, talent, a gift, and they spend the rest of their lives laboring to give these gifts back to the universe as a work of art. But the gift of art, like armshells in the Kula, must change hands. ?There is only one real deprivation,? Hyde quotes May Sarton as saying, ? ? and that is not being able to give one?s gift to those one loves most.? That is why, Hyde argues, artists have such a hard time of it in a world that treats things formerly seen as gifts?food, shell necklaces, water, and paintings?as commodities:

The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation. If this is the case, then the gifts of the inner world must be accepted as gifts in the outer world if they are to retain their vitality. Where gifts have no public currency, therefore, where the gift as a form of property is neither recognized nor honoured, our inner gifts will find themselves excluded from the very commerce which is their nourishment.

Enter the internet, the only force in our modern world that excels at turning one man?s capital into another man?s gift. The online pirate?s mission is to convert copyrighted movies and songs from things to be bought into things to be shared. On a smaller scale, many .gifs are images from copyrighted properties. That is why the internet is both salvation and curse for the creative person. If you wanted anyone to read your novel before the internet, you first had to convince a publisher to turn it into a commodity. For the gifted person, the internet makes it easy to share; the gift as a form of property is honoured.

But offline we are stuck in the market. Kind blog comments may nourish your soul, but you cannot literally eat them. Copyright can restrict access to content and make creative riffing difficult, but it also allows creators an income. And when so many are willing to enter the internet as gift economy, it makes it easier for those profiting from the internet to exploit their gift for surplus labor value.

Take the Huffington Post, which refuses to pay its bloggers despite its $315 million sale to AOL. Michelle Haimoff, writing for the Post, voices the dilemma of the gifted person hungry to share. ?I think The Huffington Post should start paying its writers immediately before it becomes, if it hasn?t already, a blog for wealthy people who have the financial luxury of writing without getting paid,? she says. But she is also grateful to the site for accepting her gift: ?However, what The Huffington Post has done extremely well is say, ?Yes.? When 11 other publications said ?no.? ? I simply logged into The Huffington Post, submitted my article, and joined the conversation.?

To join that conversation or not? It?s a question that every 21^st century creative must confront, one that pits fame against fortune, generosity against solidarity. But in the spirit of the gift, I?d like to end my post with something other than paralysis. As Hyde does point out in his conclusion to the 2007 edition of The Gift, the same decades that sold us ?market triumphalism?? the end of public funding and the commodification of everything from water to genes?also saw the rise of virtual gift economies. That virtual world serves as proof, despite all, of the human will to give. Maybe, then, the answer doesn?t lie in getting paid to blog, but in relearning how to circulate our food and water as freely as our .gifs.

Images via: flick river, i2, wikipedia

Source: http://www.thestate.ae/the-gift-the-artist-and-the-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-gift-the-artist-and-the-net

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