12 frogs

You’d think it was from The Onion, but no, the ridiculous “Web 2.0 Is Reminiscent Of Marx is from CBS News.

The author, Andrew Keen, is really on a tear here, what with pronouncements like “The consequences of Web 2.0 are inherently dangerous for the vitality of culture and the arts” and “Instead of Mozart, Van Gogh, or Hitchcock, all we get with the Web 2.0 revolution is more of ourselves.”

He isn’t entirely wrong, though:

Apple and Google and Craigslist really are revolutionizing our cultural habits, our ways of entertaining ourselves, our ways of defining who we are. Traditional “elitist” media is being destroyed by digital technologies. Newspapers are in freefall. Network television, the modern equivalent of the dinosaur, is being shaken by TiVo’s overnight annihilation of the 30-second commercial. The iPod is undermining the multibillion dollar music industry. Meanwhile, digital piracy, enabled by Silicon Valley hardware and justified by Silicon Valley intellectual property communists such as Larry Lessig, is draining revenue from established artists, movie studios, newspapers, record labels, and song writers.

Other than laughing about the “Silicon Valley intellectual property communists” line, I think Keen is right here, technology is revolutionizing our cultural habits. My immediate thought was then, “so what?” followed by “I wonder if the dinosaurs knew they were being replaced by mammals?”

Clearly I’m a pinko techie. I think the changes in technology going by the shorthand of “web 2.0″ are about making the web better and more useful for everyone. Of course, I think everyone includes companies that leverage new tools to provide better services to and build better relationships with their customers.

[link to article via Read/Write Web]