Now Onto Something Completely Different

The general perception is that movies and visual media in general are eclipsing books as a form of entertainment. Well, one thing that's not changing is the fact that most good movies or, at least, most movies acclaimed by the socio-economic structure of Hollywood, the grand dictator of our visual taste, are made from books.

Article

The good idea makers are still in literature, not in Hollywood. The original thinkers are still in literature, not in film studios.

The internet is a great bastion of democracy. Mediocrity, yeah. The more you have of something, the worse the average is going to be. That's true everywhere but in the bedroom, or in the bar, usually. Well, it's at least true on the internet.

Despite the obvious fact that writers still have most of the good ideas these days, as they have for decades, for centuries, it's sure to become more obvious over the next several years that one of their (our) bad ideas was the idea that the internet could revolutionalize literature.

Unfortunately, what happened is that the way the internet works has made us think that writing is going down the crapper. But it's not! It's not too late!

Now what literature needs is a revolution to take it back from the internet, take it back from the democracy that has turned much of it into something immediate and pandering. We were looking for a revolution, well, we found it. We need to get away from thinking that great writing can be conveyed in sound bites and sight bites and these little pixels of misrepresentation and chaos.

The internet is a great medium, but simply not great for the sublime nature of great writing, of great ideas.

Crap! This has become another diatribe. I told myself that that wasnt going to happen, and here we are. Well, oh well. There you have it. I'll try to be nicer next time.

- posted by seanmh @ 3:05 PM