How Bloggers Ate the World

"In some futuristic hell, robotic serfs gaze at a giant screen showing the crazed rantings of what is plainly George Orwell’s Big Brother. An athletically clad girl races in. She is pursued by helmeted goons and she carries a sledgehammer. With a cry, she hurls the hammer at the screen. It explodes. The serfs gaze on, bewildered and open-mouthed, as a voice tells us that, thanks to the Apple Mac, 1984 will not be like “1984”. Join us and be free." - "How Apple Ate the World", Sunday Times UK, March 19, 2006

In retrospect renegades may be revered, in real-time they're most often reviled. 

Don't hold your breath for praise. Don't spin your wheels legitimizing pointless debates. Continue with the work at hand, digging into the soil and staying true to the muse.

"While he was alive, academia (for the most part) dismissed him as a joke," writes blogger Erik Lerouge on his March 12 birthday tribute to Jack Kerouac.

Beatnik was once a derogatory term given to those Beat poets. Today one single poem from a beatnik, "Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail", raises $10,000 for the 80-year-old publisher of Charles Bukowski's earliest works made homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

'Blogger' may one day be a badge of honor, but does it matter, really, right now?

Decades later, beatnik Marxists met in salons at Kepler's bookstore and spun gold from flax and entertained wild-eyed ideas. Wild-eyes ideas like the personal computer.

Very (very) doubtful the folks at Sperry-UNIVAC were singing their praises. Computers aren't for everyone - they're for elite scientists, donchaknow.

First they ignore you,

then they ridicule you,

then they fight you,

then you win. -  Mahatma Gandhi

Update: Keen: "Either we are pro-transhumanists or we are Luddites." Me: "Either we are pro-Keen or we are Marxist digital utopians." (The world's not so black and white. I actually like Keen's edgy thought-provoking blog even if I only agree with half of it. His "Confessions of a Silicon Valley Thief" is a FANTASTIC piece of writing.)

Inspired by: Many, many comments re: Sunday's Berkeley Cybersalon on Elitism in the Media, Blogging & Podcasting, Tara Hunt's "Marx is Back - Get Used to It" (I especially enjoyed Tara's last tag), Scott Rosenberg's "Blogs: threat or menace?", and The Berkeley Blog's writeup Berkeley Cybersalon: Blogging vs. Journalism = Yawn (I especially resonated with reference to Shakespeare's "a tale, Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing"), Lisa Stone's "Cybersalon: I'll always be both Daddy's and Mommy's girl", Steve Gillmor ("maybe just maybe the next time we have this conversation we can pick up where this one ended, in the streets at the intersection of What used to be and What might be"), Andrew Keen (and blog), Apple Computer (Happy 30th!), and What The Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, by John Markoff (coincidentally a panelist).

Related: (My first post - last night - over at Corante's Media Hub ->) "Is It Journalism Debate Getting Banal"'; "An Internet Fed Mostly By Amateurs is Fascinating" (in response to a SJ Merc column titled "An Internet Fed Mostly By Amateurs is Frightening"); "LSD, Litmus Tests, Hackers and Blogging For Dollars"; and yesterday's "Salons, Primal Howl and Satisfying Yourself First."

p.s. I did not grow up in privilege. Many realize that the privileges we do enjoy now comes with responsibility to give back. Which is where blogging's origins stem from - the old-time hacker ethic of giving, sharing.

photos Steve & Steve (miniscule print reads: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their garage, ca: 1975), Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski top to bottom.

tags web2.0 blogs citizen journalism art innovation startup passion entrepreneurs inspiration inspiration beat generation counterculture apple steve jobs amateurs rule

Comments

[Sabine]

Hi there -

I thought you might want to know that there is a live recording of the Berkeley Cybersalon on Aftertv.com.

http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/aftertv/2006/03/cybersalon_the__1.html

Sabine