Monday, June 25, 2007
A Debate Between Elitist, Luddite Baby Roasters
I am posting in haste. I have to go to White City to appear on Radio 4's Today programme to talk to Andrew Keen about his book. This is slightly awkward as I shall be doing exactly the same thing this evening at the ICA. I think I shall be pro- this morning and anti- this evening. Though I have reservations about Keen's arguments - basically that the internet in its Web 2.0 incarnation is destroying culture - I don't take it personally. Web geeks do, however. Any suggestion that new web technologies are anything less than the harbingers of heaven on earth is greeted with howls of abuse and accusations of elitism, luddism, baby-roasting etc. This is, I suppose, because geeks 2.0 have, in their imaginations, become one with the web. Insult the web and you insult them. In time, their pale, meat bodies will fade away and they will become their Facebook profiles, immune and immortal. Anyway, as I said, this is in haste, but at least, thanks to Web 2.0, I can leave you with this - wonderful film title sequence.
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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.
A fine title sequence indeed - and a splendid plug for the blog slipped into the Today discussion - nice work.
ReplyDeleteI think you'll find it's killing our culture. like energy, culture cannot be destroyed. you should plan your anarchy well and have him spinning like a top.
ReplyDeleteI've never met a geek. I've met a nerd many times and I think I've seen a dork from a distance, but never a geek. according to dictionary.com, a geek is ''a performer engaging in bizarre acts like biting the head off a live chicken''. I'd not wear your best suit, Bryan.
Ozzie Osbourne's a geek? maybe I have seen one.
This is outrageous. I attest with a positively religious sense of fervour that, under false friendly pretences, Bryan should acquire Keen's home address, & the posters & lurkers of this site sholud contribute to having a truck load of stinking manure dumped in front of his house. This should be accompanied by a signboard displaying the linguistically clever words 'Your shit.'
ReplyDeleteYou made the point on the Today programme this morning that you do not believe blogs contain 'objectively balanced content'. I've no doubt that this is true but the same could be said of newspapers and broadcast media. If bloggers shout and scream exaggerated versions of their views it is in response to the slavishly unquestioning reporting of government press briefings by the mainstream media which appears to be continuing unchecked with the excuse that Brown is a new start - which he isn't.
ReplyDeleteThe most obvious example of this betrayal by journalists of their readers is the Iraq war. If there were any doubts amongst the press about the wisdom of the war, very few had the courage to voice them. Journalists are at least as responsible for the Iraq fiasco as Tony Blair. They are also responsible for the results of the dumbing down of the education system; the dismantling of our constitutional checks and balances; the immigration overload; the cheapening of the honours system and most other disasters of the past ten years through their failure to provide alternative views - either their own or those of the opposition. Journalists, far from providing balanced content have used their articles and broadcasts as blunt instruments to hammer home their own prejudices which in most cases happened to coincide with those of the NO 10 press office. They have even gone so far as to drown out stories that were political disastrous to Tony Blair by stepping up coverage of the PR driven celebrity industry.
If Tony Blair is so delusional that he believes he is the best, most successful and most popular Prime Minister since time began that is because the press have told him so day after day after day.
Blogs have a lot in common with the seditious pamphlets distributed in the historic past. They are a vital outlet for those of us who are angered by the obsequious fantasy version of Tony Blair and his government that continues to be broadcast and published by the mainstream media.
I don't disagree, Dan, and I have been critical of the Westminster press corps and its slavish acceptance of the spun agenda many times. My only point is that blog, like the mainsteam media, have to be read in context. It's more difficult with blogs because there are so many. This will in time settle down as some acquire and retain authority and some don't.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talk to him tonight, ask him if there are any other literary figures he's channeling, besides Nick Carroway, of course:
ReplyDelete"Brilliant. I couldn't have described myself better. I've only got one thing to add. I'm not sorta Nick Carrism -- although I am a big fan of Nick Carr's work. Instead, I'm sorta Nick Carrowayism. It was Nick Carroway, of course, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel Great Gatsby, simple innocent Nick, thenarrative voice of the book, who covered the Twenties and West Egg as it SHOULD be covered.
And Silicon Valley is just another West Egg eighty years on. And I'm that simple innocent Nick Carroway here to whip up an omelette out of all the fraud and the vaporware."
Also ask whether he's willing to lead by example and close down his own blog.
In the film: "Man in the White Suit" wonderfully played by Sir Alec Guiness in 1951, The unassuming inventor Sidney Stratton creates a revolutionary new fabric from which he makes himself a mock-up suit. It glows in the dark, it is impossible to get dirty and it is indestructible. Clearly he can make a fortune.
ReplyDeleteHowever the bigwigs at the clothing factory are terrified at the prospect of the clothing industry collapsing overnight. No one would want to buy conventional cloths again. They end up very angry, shouting a lot and chasing Sidney with death threats.
Not wanting to spoil the plot for those who haven’t yet seen the film, those professional writers, editors and publishers who share Andew Keen's anxieties about culture and the internet will end up as relieved as the bigwigs in the movie.
For example, at the dawn of photography, critics were worried that Fox Tolbot had invented a cheap and nasty medium that would replace painting. The internet and publishing will find its own happy medium. Give it time.
In the film: "Man in the White Suit" wonderfully played by Sir Alec Guiness in 1951, The unassuming inventor Sidney Stratton creates a revolutionary new fabric from which he makes himself a mock-up suit. It glows in the dark, it is impossible to get dirty and it is indestructible. Clearly he can make a fortune.
ReplyDeleteHowever the bigwigs at the clothing factory are terrified at the prospect of the clothing industry collapsing overnight. No one would want to buy conventional cloths again. They end up very angry, shouting a lot and chasing Sidney with death threats.
Not wanting to spoil the plot for those who haven’t yet seen the film, those professional writers, editors and publishers who share Andew Keen's anxieties about culture and the internet will end up as relieved as the bigwigs in the movie.
For example, at the dawn of photography, critics were worried that Fox Tolbot had invented a cheap and nasty medium that would replace painting. The internet and publishing will find its own happy medium. Give it time.
In the film: "Man in the White Suit" wonderfully played by Sir Alec Guiness in 1951, The unassuming inventor Sidney Stratton creates a revolutionary new fabric from which he makes himself a mock-up suit. It glows in the dark, it is impossible to get dirty and it is indestructible. Clearly he can make a fortune.
ReplyDeleteHowever the bigwigs at the clothing factory are terrified at the prospect of the clothing industry collapsing overnight. No one would want to buy conventional cloths again. They end up very angry, shouting a lot and chasing Sidney with death threats.
Not wanting to spoil the plot for those who haven’t yet seen the film, those professional writers, editors and publishers who share Andew Keen's anxieties about culture and the internet will end up as relieved as the bigwigs in the movie.
For example, at the dawn of photography, critics were worried that Fox Tolbot had invented a cheap and nasty medium that would replace painting. The internet and publishing will find its own happy medium. Give it time.
I think this nutter should be crucified. I saw him recently on Newsnight where he was talking about his book with Charles Leadbetter. Leadbetter was cool, Keen a prize twat. At one point he said that given both he and Leadbetter were obviously intelligent and discerning, these concerns did not apply to them. Keen wants a media priesthood that excludes the mere laity. And its bollocks. The media is full of jerks, telling their own lies to make money for their employing corporations. As Sir Walter Scott once said, 'Nothing but a thorough-going blackguard ought to attempt the daily press unless it is some quiet country diurnal'. Make mincemeat of this deluded fop!
ReplyDeleteFar from a wild proliferation of news, everyone just goes to BBC and the newspaper websites.
ReplyDeleteAs for 'media stars' and comment blogs, as Bryan says, a relatively small number will acquire authority.
Where Keen might have point is in his assertion that nobody is prepared to pay cash for news and comment anymore. That is a problem that presumably will only be solved by advertising.
I think he's wrong. People will always be prepared to pay for news and comment. What they are not prepared to pay for is propaganda and ham fisted attempts to manipulate public opinion. Neither will newspaper readers pay for news of the latest exploits of Jade Goody or Paris Hilton. And they won't pay for mock advertisements for back street plastic surgeons thinly disguised as articles laying out the pros and cons of breast implants.
ReplyDeleteCan't these people understand that God has ordained that the natural order is that we get our news and opinions by chopping down forests, making thin paper, staining it with ink and then using trucks, cars and bicycles to deliver it to every home in the nation?
ReplyDeleteUm - are you being ironic, Dan?
ReplyDeleteDon: In The Man In The White Suit the labor unions, too, are determined to stop him, just as it seems to be mostly journalists who have suddenly discovered that editors are the ne plus ultra of information dissemination.
ReplyDeleteDan: Iraq has been anything but a fiasco. You have obviously been mislead by your news sources.
This whole thing seems a rather tedious way of saying "More is worse" grumpy-old-men stylee. Indeed the main thing one could hold against Mr Keen is that he's too in love with being a "digital reprobate" (his phrase) and is mistaking style for substance. Who cares what some strange types in Silicon Valley think. They go through a Messiah a week in that place.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that Web 2.0 is meant to be fully interactive and all round a media-rich immersive consumer experience to borrow some, er, some completely BS cant phrases. Few seem to ask how some phosphors on an LCD screen could amount to any such thing. Perhaps that's because on the basis of cui bono, it's really some rather grasping corporations who think it's all a jolly good idea.
Walk out the front door, feel the world, smell the air and hear the birds. Accept no substitutes.
What if Sir Clive Sinclair had only invented the Sinclair C5...
ReplyDeleteIraq has been and is being very successfully raped. In some respects it has been a great success.
ReplyDeleteIt must be devastating to miss out on the great humanitarian crusade of your time; like not being a abolitionist in the early 19th century despite thinking that slavery is really a shame.
ReplyDelete