Is the sky falling, Chicken Little? Micah
Hi All, A book review in today's NY Times has confirmed what I've suspected for a long time -- a general decline in the quality of Western culture. The review can be seen at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/books/29book.html In his book entitled "The Cult of the Amateur" the author opines we are creating a world in which we will live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising. This is what happens, he suggests, when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule. He adds we are creating ". . . a world in which the lines between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation are willfully blurred." He goes on to point out the weaknesses of Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube and worries that: "By stealing away our eyeballs, the blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites aggregate. Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave. Whether you agree with the author or not, I think you'll find the review interesting in that it directly addresses the issue of Quality in our lives. Certainly during my years on earth I've seen a decline in music, art, and literature not to mention the judiciary, education and politics. Regards, Platt moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
