The Pipe Always Changes First
A pattern as old as Gutenberg. A power grab as new as last week.
danah boyd recently shared a report from MediaJustice on LinkedIn that’s worth the read. Authored by Steven Renderos, it argues that tech companies are capturing the media system through ownership, financial dependency, and control over distribution. Boyd has long examined how infrastructure shapes information flows and power and her upcoming book, Data Are Made, Not Found, sits squarely in that tradition. I can not encourage you enough to go read her work!
The MediaJustice report lands on something important and a topic I have talked about a lot before, that distribution has become the center of gravity. Maybe it feels obvious to say out loud, but distribution technologies evolve faster than the tools used to create the content flowing through them. The new pipes arrive before anyone understands what kinds of stories they’re supposed to carry.
The printing press is the earliest clear example. Gutenberg dramatically expanded the ability to reproduce text, but the first printed works loo…
