I’m wary every time I hear something new. I’m a bit wary of the idea that there’s progress in history. Instead, I like to think like Foucault, and what he said about ruptures in history.
Here’s a Wall Street Journal article on the Moguls of the New Media.
The essential idea is that the little guy can be a big player in the media world. But really there is nothing new in this. The success stories in the Wall Street Journal read like a Horatio Alger dime novel.
It’s great working in the tech industry and being part of this, and seeing outsiders storm in and take the buzz away from older, established forms of media, but we should really be weary, especially those of us who were here in the 90s.
The old rules, or the rules still apply. Money is still the power du jour, and remember AOL Time Warner? It’s now called just Time Warner.
What’s actually happening is the same thing that fueled the personal computer “revolution” of the 80s. Cheaper computers went hand in hand with greater demand. Cheaper means of communication qua new media means greater demand in that means of communication, too.