The Future Was Yesterday

Just read "The Fall and Rise of Media," a New York Times article by David Carr. As the title suggests, Carr is writing about how the publishing and media strong-hold in Manhattan is crumbling--quickly--and how it will rise again with a new look by a different generation that values new and a-traditional forms of media.

Yawn...

"That feeling of age, of a coming sunset, is tough to avoid in all corners of traditional publishing. Earlier in November, the New York comptroller said that employment in communications in New York had lost 60,000 jobs since 2000, a year when the media industry here seemed at the height of its powers."

And later on...

"For those of us who work in Manhattan media, it means that a life of occasional excess and prerogative has been replaced by a drum beat of goodbye speeches with sheet cakes and cheap sparkling wine. It’s a wan reminder that all reigns are temporary, that the court of self-appointed media royalty was serving at the pleasure of an advertising economy that itself was built on inefficiency and excess. Google fixed that."

Yes, things are changing. Yes, the medium makes the difference. Yes, new-fangled gizmos and re-written business models are altering the landscape.

But, really, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Consumers are still inherently the same. Wade through all the micro-cosmic muck of new and old fads and you'll see a pattern. We all want something quickly, comfy, pretty, and new. Plus, the whole two-sided desire to have what everyone else has, and at the same time have what no one else has.

Media, advertisement, consumerism. It's all the business of desire. And god damn, what we want is fucking fickle.

Someone once wrote (Heidegger maybe?) that when mediums are combined and mixed and become so accessible to the masses those mediums become trivialized. Perhaps. But then again, the increase in social networking, internet, new technologies, new mediums is resulting in the over-abundant and daily use of literacy and writing for people who otherwise might not call themselves writers. For example, check out this recent article from the BBC about how kids who use twitter and facebook and the internet and blogging are better writers.

Maybe the pro-generation of new mediums does make the core ones more trivial. Perhaps. But writing is always at the core of it, even if no body sees a damn written word. It's there.

So with the way media is changing, with more and more people becoming writers without intending to, then is intentionally becoming a writer becoming trivial?

Perhaps. But I don't think so. I think it would make you a king among men.

Or that's just a delusion of grandeur....