Wish I'd seen this insightful comment from Brian Moffatt (at gapingvoid) before I posted, "We're All Journalists in the Age of Ordinary Art".
[References this Clay Shirky piece and this particular quote: "So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast."]
The man can write. (Anybody can, if they just let themselves get out of the way.) Strip the control and compromise from the publishing, head for the personal truth, and you end up with some very engaging writing - Clay's cultural mashup, the Midwestern American in the NYC Iranian Bud Bodega, implies some greater insights - both personal and universal - more than the mere and routine 'Gee isn't NYC great.' I now have some notion of him beyond his ideas, which also puts his ideas into a more shapely context. This is the type of writing that will become 'regular' - running to the vast sea of producers idea. This is a threat to the old school. It undermines, as shirky implies, cynicism, snarkiness, sentimentalism, censorship, and aggregation. People aren't watching when they're creating. Big Media and their mini-media Gawkers will be left holding onto to nothing but Fred Dirst's penis.
Ah, yes, it's all in the getting out of the way.
Chris Locke writes about "Indigo Children," a meme reported on by the New York Times. The Indigo idea sounds like it pushes a whole bunch of buttons all at once — New Age, angels, the paranormal, child-worship, ADD. If it had some anti-child-porn hysteria about it, it'd be perfect. As one of the people in the NYT article says, this is basically the same social world view as Harry Potter's muggles v. wizards set up.
Anyway, it is a great example of what Chris has been talking about over at Mystic Bourgeoisie, America's Toughest to Spell weblog
Posted by: down | January 16, 2006 at 06:20 PM
Arrrrgh....now I remember why they HAD to come up with more interesting video games.....boring.
judi - look at the watch, stare at the watch while it swings slowly before you. Listen only to the sound of my voice. You are getting sleepy, very sleepy
Posted by: ara-mobail. | January 18, 2006 at 07:41 PM
http://www.hugechoiceof.com/
Posted by: DFDF | May 06, 2007 at 02:12 PM