I like reading things like this over at 37 Signals that make me think about the impact of technology on our culture. Matt comments on a new book by Andrew Keen titled The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture. Matt gives a few specific examples from the book then goes on to say that Keen is kind of overreacting.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. We really want to change the way people communicate with each other and how they engage with ideas when in physical locations. Is that just more useless noise or does it actually add something meaningful to our culture? I don’t know, but I think successful ideas are concepts that are well aligned with a momentum of change in our society. Whether they create something good for humanity vs just extra noise is up to the individuals using the technology. Personally, I have a lot of faith that there are always creative and talented people that use technology in positive ways that add to our understanding of humanity.
Oh, I also really like this statement of Matt’s: “commenting on the news is a lot different than discovering it, we all suffer when reporting disappears”
I’m definitely commenting here…
Last thing; another piece about usefulness vs meaningfulness talking about Twitter on Wired. Wired says Twitter creates a kind of sixth sense… Very interesting…