"Without an elite mainstream media, we will lose our memory for things learnt, read, experienced, or heard."

You of all people Ned should be wondering hard! "New journalism" 2006 = reactionary blowhards browbeating sad liberals 24/7

Ah, Hugh Hewitt you mean. And he's just up the road from me, as it were.

1. "Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts. Online stores personalize our preferences, thus feeding back to us our own taste."

In the "Are you fucking kidding me?" column:

1. "Consider Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo and a couple of other brilliantly talented works of the same name Vertigo: the 1999 book called Vertigo, by Anglo-German writer W.G. Sebald, and the 2004 song "Vertigo," by Irish rock star Bono."

2. Everything else in the article.

I think I'm unconvinced...

For the most part all I see this stuff doing is bringing conversation that used to go on in private out onto the public internet.

(i say this with more than 50% seriousness.)

We can help smash the elitism of the Hollywood studios and the big record labels. Our technology platform will radically democratize culture, build authentic community, create citizen media."

While I think the argument for "smashing the big record labels" has a bit more validity, I hardly see it smashing Hollywood. The most the web will do in this regard is create the word of mouth that will kill bad movies quickly and if we're lucky, make moneymakers out of smaller, niche films. But the cost of making a film -- a quality film that enough people will want to see and will, therefore, make a lasting mark in cultural consciousness -- is very high. I can't see anything on the web making it easier for more, "better" product to be made.

I am also trot out the old point that getting more people to sit alone behind their computers, even if it is to participate in the ephemeral shared "community" of ILX or wherever. Maybe there's marginally more exchange of views, but it takes some physical presence to create community.

Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts.

I think what the author is trying to get at is the fact that the proliferation of sources (be they source material or "coloring" as Nabisco calls it) means that I have more choices for my time. And most people aren't going to think, well, if I have time for only two magazines I'm going to read The Nation and The Weekly Standard, to get two opposing viewpoints. I'm going to read the Nation and dailykos.com. [I'm picking very simplistic examples to illustrate my point.] Not necessarily our "own" thought but similar thought.

The big problem -- and it has less to do with net culture than it does cable/satellite television -- is the simple profileration of media sources. So first of all, there's a lot of noise. Secondly, the ability of more people to have a voice, be it on 24-hour news channels, print, radio, and e-media, means that everyone is fighting for a niche. And while I wouldn't want to argue that we shouldn't have checks on the media, I think a lot of people now see this broad spectrum of opinion and feel they're all equal. If blogs can find, publish, and fume about errors at CBS, and ascribe them to political bias... the result is that no one trusts any media source.

And my gut feeling is that nine times out of ten, people refuse to believe any "fact" that doesn't agree with their own worldview. They feel the source of fact is biased, and can easily find another source that offers whatever "counter-fact" they want.

The end result of these processes are the hostility and intolerance in our (American, anyway) political culture and a parallel fracturing of common cultural touchpoints.

Or something like that.

I DECLARE WAR ON YOU ALL

NO EXCEPTIONS

ok

http://simpsons.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Just_Don%27t_Look

aw <3

take back everything I've ever said negatively abt the simpsons

lol in the space of 3 posts, LJ commits absolute hypocrisy :D

http://www.patwreck.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/MichealJacksonPopcorn.gif

ok simpsons is entertainment not mediation kthx nuff

FAO Americans, this was the flashpoint: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2010/12/what_vince_cable_said_about_ru.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12048836

s m d h

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/cable_murdoch_reuters304.jpg

Murdoch's full-on looking like whashisname from Raiders of the Lost Ark here

Toht

That was it.

Ronald Lacey? I never figured out whether he was supposed to be Japanese.

phonetic equivalent of Toht (Tod) is German for death so um probably not?