"Every Home Is Wired":
2 -- The Progressive Rock Subculture and the Net
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in fact, these audiences are what the Net seems to support in abundance. Specialised groups in Usenet and specialised webs do not necessarily appeal to massive audiences (in the 100,000 to millions range), but to quirky, specialised groups of hundreds or several thousand people. Before the invention of computer networks, an individual could not easily seek out several hundred others interested in a specialised hobby or area of interest, when those people were spread worldwide. (December, "Challenges", n. pag.)
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At the same time, too, Web and newsgroups are also upwardly scaleable and can accommodate increasing numbers of participants; furthermore, the better reach and interactivity of the Net can be instrumental in gathering the Prog diaspora across the world, and open a global subcultural market for Prog-related products. As the medium of choice in a global, yet highly segmentalised cultural environment for which the description 'postmodern' can hardly be avoided, the Internet, and digital technology as such, has contributed much to the further breakdown of formerly strict distinctions between 'high' and 'mass' culture. This, too, fits with Progressive Rock's own ambitions to bridge this divide, which can be traced back to their own origins in English art schools: "virtually all general sociological accounts of capitalist societies assume a clear distinction between 'high' and 'mass' culture. ... Art schools cross these divisions in terms of both class and ideology; art school graduates are petit-bourgeois professionals who, as pop musicians, apply 'high art' skills and identities to a mass cultural form" (Frith & Horne 1-2). As much as the Internet, then, Prog is a postmodern phenomenon: "postmodernism entails a new fluidity between culture and society. Culture is not in some way separated from society or reflecting parts of it. ... Society cannot be defined without taking account of cultural forms" (Longhurst 112). Bit 44

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© 1998 Axel Bruns