Artists, Technology, Economy and Ethics
"Xyz has bought a car!" That was my brother wondering, just around the time India's economy opened up. The economy had nothing to do with Xyx, but owning a car was a big deal in those days. My brother, after having slogged for a few years to get to a respectable qualification couldn't come to terms with a cinema comedian buying a car. Photo by Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash A century ago, performing artists have to perform regularly to earn a living. Two technological inventions made a huge difference in the lives of performing artists - Faster transportation and more importantly the invention called cinema and its offsprings like Television. Before cinema became pervasive, actors, dancers, and singers moved around in trains and cars, could earn a better living than their ancestors. With the invention of cinema, a movie is produced once, distributed many times, and earns revenue even long after the death of those creative people who created it. ...