0. Preface In this and the next few installments, I will be addressing a number of connected ideas: the changing role in our lives of material things; the changing nature of firms; the rise of what I shall term hyper-creativity; how it interacts with slower moving institutions such as government; some examples; and the connection of all these with advertising. All these are involved in the change from what I will now call the “Money-Thing […]
A couple of years ago, the philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt made publishing history of a sort by allowing his 7,000-word paper “On Bullshit” — which lives up pretty well to the second word in its title — to be published as a book. Bind some printed pieces of paper together, preferably in hard covers, distribute them via bookstores, at a cost of around $20, and voila, you have a book. If you choose not buy […]
“Prostitutes and gigolos are sexual professionals. Through hard work and experience, they are now masters of their craft. The best surely deserve excellent pay for what they do. If we have sex with amateurs and without paying for it, how will the professionals be able to continue to offer their vital services? Our culture will be destroyed. Ancient traditions will come to a halt. And the masters, the real pros, have yet another vital function: […]
1. Howdy, Pardner! Andrew Keen, in his diatribe, the cult of the amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture, claims to be mainly concerned about “Web 2.0,” though he lards his list of ills with e-mail spam, phishing, online porn and gambling, which don’t really fit. The Internet at present is somewhere between a wild west, a playground, and an experimental laboratory. All sorts of things get tried, standards are few and unevenly enforceable, […]
——Part I of a review of (and riff on) Andrew Keen’s the cult of the amateur. A hundred and eleven years ago, the “modern” Olympic games were born, emphasizing what could have been criticized as a conservative “cult of the amateur.” There were strict rules that only pure amateurs could compete, which meant, of course, that only people of independent means could enter. This neatly kept out representatives of the “great unwashed” or, in other […]