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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Time for the last post. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.
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Time for the last post
by noteworthy at 8:30 am EST, Feb 20, 2006 |
Blogging -- if you will forgive the cartoon philosophising -- brought the European Enlightenment to the US. Each blogger was his, or her, own printing press, spontaneously exercising their freedom to criticise. Which is great. But along the way, opinion became the new pornography on the internet. ... If the pornography of opinion doesn’t leave you longing for an eroticism of fact, the vast wasteland of verbiage produced by the relentless nature of blogging is the single greatest impediment to its seriousness as a medium. "Oh, the boredom of argument without action, politics without power." ... Blogging is the closest literary culture has come to instant obsolescence. No Modern Library edition of the great polemicists of the blogosphere to yellow on the shelf; nothing but a virtual tomb for a billion posts -- a choric song of the word-weary bloggers, forlorn mariners forever posting on the slumberless seas of news.
I wonder if anyone ever wrote an ode to the telegram or the personal letter, lamenting the evanescent qualities of the telephone. (Can you imagine a book being published 40 years from now, based on Sergey Brin's instant messages?) A historical tidbit for you: Needless bureaucracy led to the founding of William Dockwra's Penny Post in 1680. A merchant of London, Dockwra realized the potential for a business designed to quickly and cheaply deliver mail from one place in London to another, all for the cost of a penny. Along with his business partner, Robert Murray, he quickly founded his business and based their head office in Line Street, along with seven additional sorting offices. The Penny Post met with tremendous success, and grew to five hundred receiving houses in just two years. Messengers would deliver to each area between 5 and 15 times daily. It was a well-run system that received much acclaim.
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RE: Time for the last post
by flynn23 at 11:09 am EST, Feb 20, 2006 |
noteworthy wrote: Blogging -- if you will forgive the cartoon philosophising -- brought the European Enlightenment to the US. Each blogger was his, or her, own printing press, spontaneously exercising their freedom to criticise. Which is great. But along the way, opinion became the new pornography on the internet. ... If the pornography of opinion doesn’t leave you longing for an eroticism of fact, the vast wasteland of verbiage produced by the relentless nature of blogging is the single greatest impediment to its seriousness as a medium. "Oh, the boredom of argument without action, politics without power." ... Blogging is the closest literary culture has come to instant obsolescence. No Modern Library edition of the great polemicists of the blogosphere to yellow on the shelf; nothing but a virtual tomb for a billion posts -- a choric song of the word-weary bloggers, forlorn mariners forever posting on the slumberless seas of news.
I wonder if anyone ever wrote an ode to the telegram or the personal letter, lamenting the evanescent qualities of the telephone. (Can you imagine a book being published 40 years from now, based on Sergey Brin's instant messages?)
A good point. Actually, I would be interested in such a book. I think there's a lot of archiological gold to be mined in such streams of information. But I think the author's more salient point is the fact that blogging in and of itself is just masturbation. I'm not even trying to re-orient it to make it a compelling medium. It's an unfortunate artifact of the Internet revolution. I love the idea of millions (billions?) of people contributing their thoughts and ideas and exchanging information. But c'mon people... DO SOMETHING! At least devote some of that energy to making something happen, rather than opining on it endlessly. (as I'm doing right now) This is why I am sickened by Sand Hill Road's fascination with this phenomenon. It's purely a mechanism to rob people of their money rather than to create lasting and profound change. As a wise person once said, "There's no 'there' there." |
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