| >> “I don't like that Burning Man curator's quote calling their saying a form of "inclusivity" when it doesn't include the lurker.” > “Indeed. If you explicitly provide no space for spectators…” I think of this very differently. Burning Man has grown organically with the dawn of the Information Age. It is a product of it. No matter how you use the Internet, when it comes to learning and engagement, look at the origins—sharing of scientific information. You are a scientist/artist. You do things. You publish and promote your work in the vein of the scientific method—-making reasoned claims of truth which a stand on their own merit until proven false. It’s not a stretch to make a similar statement of art. It’s a virtuous cycle, no? If you are “lurking” then you are not contributing to the cycle but only benefiting from it. Not participating is a mistake, and failure. It’s a mistake because the health of the Internet is measured in truth. The actual financial cost can be very low, creating your own original works and expressions of truth. “The real world” is already full of spectators. We call them customers. If there is a hypocrisy at BM, it’s that the cost and time investment favors individuals who have benefited (financially) in the real world from “lurkers” who are willing to pay a modest fee to get their information instead of using those costs to learn to participate and cooperate with others.
The only real remedy for individuals who struggle to participate in their own is to organize and form groups. And this work is difficult and people’s feelings will be hurt and they will suffer cognitive dissonance with our dominant culture of consumption and consumerism. So in the end I would take a line from within the Python community: be excellent to each other. |
Not necessarily. Your argument contains the premise that the choice is between lurking and contributing and indeed if that were the case then contributing is the more beneficial one and lurking should be discouraged. However the premise is false, because there is the third option of not participating at all.
Imagine a group of (say) ten creators, ten non-participants and zero lurkers. If one non-participant switches to being a lurker, the total amount of knowledge about (and enjoyment from) the thing in question will increase, while the enjoyment of the creators stays the same. The total amount of enjoyment has increased. It could perhaps increase even more if the newfound lurker would also create, but that is not always an option and the perfect is the enemy of the good.