What made the punk scene special, in addition to the DIY culture, was the fact that it wasn’t made with tomorrow in mind, it was made for the present and that immediacy, like twittering/blogging tools today allows trends to evolve at their own pace (instead of being planned out in intervals as with disco - anyone remember Dance Fever? haha!).

Chris - brilliant .. I just have to point people over hear -you articulate my intuition .. made it visible. Thanks

whoops .. meant to comment on the other story .. silly me .. a blogger driven by passion and wanting to talk to other bloggers

That’s right! I think this is a culture about accessability and do-it-yourself. With that, comes a whole new world of ideas and possibilities. It’s no longer a hindrance but a boost to move forward and evolve into something better! yay! I got to find this book now.

Oh,…. just make me nostalgic why don’t you? Yes anyone who has ever been a part of the culture, that was one thing to appreciate is that you didn’t need rich parents to be a part of it. Another documentary to look at which deals with youth and main stream media is a frontline documentary called “Merchants of Cool.” It’s incredibly thought provoking in how youth culture shapes mainstream media and how mainstream media shapes youth culture.

Matt presents an interesting argument. I met him just before his book was published when he came to Rhode Island and spoke at our conference. (Ironic to your post Chris - we’ve got Marc Ecko coming this year.)

His book chronicles our youth culture’s ability to drive innovation through any means necessary – often times treading in illegal waters along the way. Although I think this is a streak that characterizes every generation, it is a big time challenge for companies and artists to develop new economies for developing, sharing and consuming information. There’s more than one answer but piracy as a business model is pretty darn intriguing.

Hi Chris. For me, Matt Mason’s session was a fabulous end to a terrific un-conference. Kudos to Whitney for bringing him to the stage. What particularly resonated for me was his apparent economics lesson of the day: ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’

Hey Cynthia - That is his lesson isn’t it? Philosophically, it’s a cyclical argument. This generation creating the new will in turn become the generation that defends the old as the next crop of new makes its assault.

At the end of the day, I think sustainability - at least in terms of economics - comes from an ability to if not ‘join ‘em, at least take the best from them and create your own new space.

The book sounds interesting and I will have to check it out. I lived a good chunk of my adult life in England and wrote one of thesis papers on Indie music/Independent labels. Part of that paper was about pirate radio and legend John Peel.

The mention of graffiti, I’ll take this opportunity to mention artist, Banksy. In recent years, I have been living in the states and I was surprised to learn that Banksy is not very well known over here. I strongly urge anyone that is into graf art and hasn’t heard of him check his stuff out: http://www.banksy.co.uk/