Miskatonic Books blog writes of the excitement we should be feeling to be living at this moment…

“Imagine you were a little kid picking up the first 1960’s Marvel comics, or on the set of King Kong with Ray Harryhausen learning how to do stop [motion] action, or getting those first 1920’s issues of Weird Tales.”

He’s talking about indie horror books, but he could equally be talking about many other indie fields of activity that take advantage of the new technologies. Why aren’t we, as a culture, more excitied about this? It’s the first time in history it’s happened. It’s a moment in which creatives have, at our fingertips and either free or with micro start-up costs:

* the means of learning (forums, tutorials, how-to guides, access to gurus and “making of” showcases, access to immense libraries of inspiration, in abundance and often for free)

* the means of production (free/cheap software, cheap PCs, easy R&D on the Web, templates and Creative Commons content etc)

* the means of distribution (the Web for downloads, cheap writeable DVD’s, print-on-demand books, soon 3D printers-and-shippers, etc)

* the means of highly targetted marketing (niche blogs, Facebook groups, email, etc)

* the means of being instantly and directly paid (PayPal)

Maybe it’ll only be the kids of the new baby boom (they’ll be aged about 12-15 by the mid 2020s) who will really ‘ride out for the future’ on what we’re building now.