The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Over the last 400 years, society in Europe and North America has developed a system of gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are the people who are specialized in any field of knowledge and who decide if others may be admitted to their trade. In the Middle Ages, gatekeepers were the people who had studied and worked to become a member of a guild. Painters, blacksmiths, and tailors are all examples of people who studied under a master craftsman and were admitted to a field after proving they had sufficient skill or knowledge. In our time, almost all fields have gatekeepers of some sort. Film studios have gatekeepers who decide what films will be made, publishing houses decide on novels, and recording labels set the standards for what music will reach the public. Even the editors of academic journals decide what articles will be published and what fields of knowledge will be publicized as important. The trouble with this system is easy to see. While the system of gatekeepers has advanced the knowledge of our society, it has also silenced the voices of many minority groups and individuals with dissenting opinions. Using the Internet as a tool, many individuals and groups are beginning to dismantle parts of the system. The easiest industry to examine where the system of gatekeepers is being dismantled is the music industry. For years, only groups and individuals who looked or sang a certain way were rewarded with recording contracts. Others were doomed to perform for a very small audience. True no longer, and the idea is simple; if an artist places their work on the Internet, it has the opportunity to gather an international audience and the artist has the chance to have an international following. This is especially true for those who work in smaller fields. The more of an opportunity your music has to be heard, the more chances you will have to sell it. While this has begun in earnest in the music industry, other industries are not far behind. Atom Films is one of a few websites willing to post short films of many types from around the world. Producers send their films in, they are posted online and viewers are free to make comments directly on the website. Viewing these comments, beginning producers are free to change their style, or gather favourable comments for a rush on the major studios. The same is true for writers. There are dozens of websites filled with the poetry and prose of aspiring authors looking only for an audience and the feedback of others so they can improve their craft. The gatekeeper system is very prevalent in the academic world, where journals may publish one out of every 100 articles submitted to them, and readers have to pay thousands of dollars for a yearly subscription. Now, first rate journals can be found online in almost every field from archaeology to zoology and many of them are free or available at very reduced rates. Using this system, knowledge is spread across the globe, and especially into developing nations, much quicker then was possible in the past. While the system of gatekeepers allowed knowledge to advance in our society, fences are coming down, allowing many groups and individuals to bring their voices to the world for the first time. If you are interested in checking out new writers, recording artists, or film producers, many of these sites are well worth a look. ([email protected])
