Like an oiled boomerang, Richard Florida returns: “I got wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities, become a new middle class like my father’s, and we were going to live happily forever after,” he said. “I could not have anticipated among all this urban growth and revival that there was a dark…
Does digital reproduction drive down the cost of all cultural content to zero? Are artists doomed to penury in the 21st century? Steven Johnson in the New York Times Magazine suggests not: Writers, performers, directors and even musicians report their economic fortunes to be similar to those of their counterparts 15 years ago, and in…
Are creatives replacing artists? Does it matter? Bill Deresiewicz says: When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems:…