Saturday, October 16, 2010

I'm a pathological name-giver. So it shouldn't surprise you I have a whole host of names for various internet metapundit types:

Royalists: these are people who feel like the internet is too free. Specifically, they feel that, because everyone can say everything, nobody is really able to say anything. I don't buy this for a split second: top-down content selection isn't how you get greatness. It's how you get television.

NeuroLuddites: your brain is probably buzzing with new information right now. These people hate that. Fearful that their poor cerebral cortices will burn out if they keep running them this hard, they warn us that The Internet Is Making You Dumb, usually citing studies relating to specific types of thinking which have less value when you have access to fast search.

MediaMarxists: there's a really stunning number of rich jerkwads trying to make the internet more like television and less like anything anyone smarter than a raddish would actually want. Their direct opposition are MediaMarxists, who go entirely overboard from this admirable starting point and start claiming that if we don't confront and directly destroy these influences, we're all doomed. Useful allies when you're trying to keep internet neutrality alive, but I wouldn't trust them to actually run anything.

Internet Anarchists: There's always someone pounding the table and saying that all content everywhere should be free, and that nothing should ever be secret for anyone ever. I'm actually in this camp, as long as we start at the top and work our way down, which all too often isn't the case.

Humbugs: For every person extolling the virtue of any facet of the internet, there's someone saying it's a distraction from the Real World, which of course is going to hell in a handbasket because you stupid kids are all on the internet blogging instead of getting arrested like We Did Back In My Day.

And of course, many more. I might have a problem...

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