"Every Home Is Wired":
1 -- The Net in Relation to Music Subcultures
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With the increasing intermingling of cultures, there are also "new, eclectic combinations of world musical elements" (Campbell Robinson et al. 4). Thus, a "process of international bricolage" (Campbell Robinson et al. 249) emerges, where genres which encourage the incorporation of extraneous elements are advantaged over 'closed' genres, such as traditional rock'n'roll or punk, that limit themselves to the cultivation of deeply entrenched traditional generic elements -- we will soon find this to be an advantage for Progressive Rock. Bit 22
The Pros and Cons of Segmentation
The segmentation of culture may also lead to the limitation of a taste community's horizons, however, as the subculture shuts itself off in its own market and media niche. As Anthony Smith fears, the highly diversified cosmopolitan communications structure would then come to be "manned [and the gender-specific language appears justified here] by an increasingly technical intelligentsia", which in abandoning "the social critique of its earlier humanistic counterparts" would end up "affectively neutral" (177). Such (self-) isolation and the resulting lack of social cohesion might be avoided, though, simply by virtue of the structure of the media which have allowed the individual styles to establish their respective subcultural territories. Significantly, "the global media reach of the Internet not only facilitates communication among members of existing distributed groups and teams but, perhaps more important, provides a medium for the formation and cultivation of new relationships by providing virtually instantaneous access to thousands of potential contacts who have compatible interests and spheres of expertise" (McLaughlin et al. 91).7 Bit 23

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© 1998 Axel Bruns