Swami, in the guise of Lakshmi, asks if I am trying to “mass produce” my blogging. He also helpfully links to his wife’s post where she opines that if creative work is subject to mass production, its quality suffers.
The implication of course, is that my blogging quality has declined, and the cause is the recent spurt in posts.
I do agree that mass production is bad for creative work. My blogging quality might have declined recently. But the two aren’t related. I am not blogging under pressure of a deadline. I am not paid by number of posts. If I am posting something, it is because I wanted to post that item. So the decline in blogging quality (if there is one) cannot be blamed on mass production.
But then the thing about mass production for non-creative goods is that it gives you uniform quality – not uniformly good quality. That implies that if you are willing to put up with non-mass production, you should expect inconsistent quality. Sometimes I’ll be good. Sometimes I’ll be really bad.
Ravi,
You are blogging because of the “pagerank” pressure… And the pressure due to the popularity of a Chitraveena player…
And what part of your argument implies your conclusion that – “non-mass production gives inconsistent quality”?
You caught me out. It isn’t a conclusion and my argument doesn’t imply it. Individual production gives inconsistent quality because it depends on the skill of human beings doing the production – and different human beings have differing skill levels (and the same human being has different skill levels at different times).
Of course, it is impossible to standardise or mechanise the manufacture of television serials. As a result their quality will always be inconsistent, which was Lakshmi’s point in the first place. But unlike me, producers do not have the option of not running a particular episode because they aren’t happy with it.
I know that I’ve made a hash of my arguments, but I am sleepy now.