Diapsalmata is the plural Greek form for the Hebrew selah, a word that recurs in the Psalms of David at the end of a verse, and which can easily acquire the meaning of ‘refrains,’ i.e. something (for example a mood) repeated over and over again
The Web hasn’t been designed to do anything. And so it doesn’t do anything, much less anything smart, creative, or suggesting awareness.
Twenty years ago one would have expected something like the Web to have liberated the creative spirits inside tremendous numbers of people who had not previously had such an outlet. Instead, Lanier argues, the Web has caused the evolution of creativity to stagnate.
Where, Lanier asks, are the radically new musical genres since the 1990s? Technological change seems to be accelerating, and yet the development of novel forms of musical expression appears to have not merely slowed, but stalled altogether. We’re listening to non-radical variations on themes that existed two decades ago, Lanier argues. (…)
More generally, he challenges readers to point to the new generation of people living off their creativity on the Web. (…)
Contrary to the prevailing idea that consumers on the Web should not be obligated to pay individual human content-creators for their work, Lanier is adamant that music and human-created information should not be free. Creativity that goes unpaid leads to a novelty- and diversity-impoverished intellectual world dominated by material that takes minimal effort to produce—think LOLcats.
