Koppel summarizes the new media and Society

You're missing my point.

The same things were said of television - too fast, too shallow, too hot, too cold - at the moment of its ascendancy in the culture. So 1950 or so.

 

And you're missing my point. Pointing out issues is a way of beginning to at least ponder them, if not act on them. Koppel would have been right no matter what his employment history.

 

Where did I say we shouldn't work on the challenges the technology presents?

 

You minimized the need to by kinda killing the messenger

 

No, I pointed out that the arrival of this new communications technology and its shortcomings mirrors the arrival of every new communications technology and their shortcomings. All of which we've adapted to in the past.

I'm not busting on Koppel at all. He's right, but he would have been right if he'd been a newspaper columnist writing essentially the same things about the rise of network radio in 1925.

 

But would those things have also been true about radio in 1935? The fact that the Internet has exacerbated the problem, and continues to head that way 10 or 15 years later, is a pretty strong suggestion that things won't ultimately turn for the better.

 

"We have heard this before! We will ADAPT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Was an excellent argument.

A decade ago.

The Internet gives you every medium at once. The only adaptation is for individual media jockeys to leave print and take jobs with Web sites that have strong brand equity.

Oh noes! I said brand!

 

Why all the exclamation points?

The democratization of information is certainly the defining attribute of the new technology. It upends business models, too.

But so did the printing press.

Instantaneous interactivity creates as much opportunity for good as it does for its opposite.

 

Television was supposed to revolutionize education.

Reality TV shows starring D-list celebutards is a strange way of adapting to the potential of the medium.

 

But without TV, we wouldn't have you saying" celebreturds"

 

American Held Hostage, Day1...10...56...136...192...218..284...345..386...444, was the instigator of the instant news cycle.

 

It also gave us 'Omnibus' and 'Sesame Street' and 'Frontline' and 'The Wire', so it's not all brainless drivel.

Human nature being what it is, we program lots of brainless drivel and porn on every new platform.