Are you the customer?
weblog.raganwald.com
weblog.raganwald.com
I'm grateful for those, in a way that's a lot better than cash. If it were cash, I might be tempted to ask whether writing really pays. The answer is definitely it does not pay compared to just about anything. I could make more money doing menial labour building Koi ponds and have lots of fun.
However, the buzz of getting a book or CD is way higher than the equivalent cash value. It's very irrational: If I take two hours to write a post, and I earned $14.00 from it, I would be devastated to earn $7 an hour.
But if I get a copy of The Goldberg Variations that I'd never heard before from that article, and I get hours of enjoyment from it... It feels like a terrific bargain to work for two hours and then enjoy a wonderful piece of music.
(I am not getting into the other rewards of writing. I am strictly responding to the question about referrals.)
It's odd (to me) how deeply American culture has ingrained in its subjects the notion that they are first and foremost consumers.
For me, the cognitive dissonance first surfaced when I thought about television: The TV networks are the producers, the advertisers are the consumers, and the viewers are the product. TV is not primarily a means of delivering entertainment to viewers-- it is a means of delivering viewers to advertisers.
It seems natural to think of ourselves as the end, but sometimes we're just the means....
Isn't this a recursive statement?