Readers of Taste

"The main problem, if that's the word, is that we live in the physical world," writes Chris Anderson. The problem, if that's the word, is "suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop." And to free ourselves of this tyranny is to see expression of "our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity." The Internet's virtuality, then, offers the ideal, trapped in the physical world, unmediated expression. Anderson gets palpable, winking glee at the coming of this utopia from the possibility that we may all be individuated by consumer choices. He would find companions among the economists who, looking only at the numbers, argue that oil is a commodity only limitable by technologic development, which they see as finding its limitlessness through absolution from physical constraints. The physical medium is ignored in favor of its purpose: in Anderson's case, to buy digital products. There is an infrastructure at work here, whose costs are becoming more and more negligable, but is dependent on not just fallable sytems, but on human labour. The college student downloading iTunes tracks may do so because of a physical network that must be maintained and powered. "The Long Tail" is only long in a particular dimension; Anderson neatly only addresses anyone who cares to and can read his article by referring to us as "we."