Saturday, April 07, 2007
Bloggery Birthday
I see blogs are ten years old today. Long pause. Mind blank. Ah! Who is this Andrew Keen? He is a 'former dotcom entrepreneur (why are they all former?) and the author of the forthcoming book Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture.' Former Keen thinks that bloggery is 'seductive in the sense that it convinces people to think they have more to say and are more interesting than they really are. The real issue is whether it adds any more to our culture. Most of it is just so transient and ephemeral.' What about breathing, former Andrew? Very ephemeral that. Adds to the culture? Depends whose breathing I guess. 'Not every blogger,' concedes former Mr Keen, 'is a narcissist who has nothing to say.' No, some are narcissists with a lot to say. Welcome to Thought Experiments. Nothing former here.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Actually, identifying as I do with Dr Cox from Scrubs, I should more accurately describe myself as an emotionally-crippled narcissist.
ReplyDeleteI've written about Keen here and here. He's a total bore, and as narcissistic as any blogger, if not moreso.
ReplyDeleteThe "former" part of his identity is very important, because he's basically posing as the former advisor to the emperor who is now going public with the news that the emperor has no clothes. It gives his critique "cred".
While I was searching for my past posts on Keen I came across this very similar critique of the internet by Christine Rosen in her article "The Age of Ego-Casting". She makes a more erudite, if equally silly, case against net technologies.
This is typical upperclass disdain for the unwashed. You Brits should be familiar with it.
As Duck says, check him out.
ReplyDeletehttp://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/
He's on a trip is Mr Keen.
What makes some people think that their thoughts/opinions/obsessions are so much better than anyone else's?
ReplyDeleteAh thanks, guys, nice to have my feelings about Keen confirmed. And I'm not sure who you're referring to, Mutterings.
ReplyDelete