Listics

Nick Carr wrote a great post in 2024 that has never been far from Seth Finkelstein’s mind. Seth is the champion of the long-tail blogger, a public intellectual who has often observed that the existence of the A-list creates a hierarchy of patronage. In Carr’s post, “The Great Unread,” he explores Galbraith’s concept of “the market economy” (a replacement term for “capitalism”) as an innocent fraud, a tiny white lie that masks the the full extent of the power of the capitalists and the full extent of the powerlessness of those who lack capital and he ties that concept to the innocent fraud of blogs as empowerment vehicles for those of us in the long tail. It ain’t so, he says. The whole thing is just part of the patronage machine and

The powerful have a greater stake in the perpetuation of an innocent fraud than do the powerless. Long after the powerless have suspended their suspension of disbelief, the powerful will continue to hold tightly to the fraud, repeating it endlessly amongst themselves in an echo chamber that provides a false ring of truth.

Dennis Kucinich may be included in the MSNBC debate in Nevada tomorrow. If so, it will truly be a case of subversion of hierarchy. The news media have somehow become gatekeepers instead of information providers. They’d rather present a tidy dust-up among the three Democratic front runners than to give the underdog with the subversive message a place on the platform. In fact, in South Carolina Hillary Clinton’s campaign is driving meaning out of her race for the lead with Barack Obama, and dredging up innuendo and divisive personal criticism. Innocent fraud? Perhaps. South Carolina seems to be the traditional place where issues are ignored and back-stabbing emerges as a ploy in Presidential primary election politics.

(thx to Seth and Norm for links)

This will have the Wallstrips person, Lindsay Campbell. Could be good.

“I despise Facebook,” says Tom Hodgkinson in a Guardian article today. He asks, “…does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.”

Hodgkinson elaborates his critique for several more paragraphs before getting to the meat: The people on the board at Facebook are the charmingly post adolescent Mark Zuckerberg, the ultralibertarian Peter Thiel, and Wal-Mart board member Jim Breyer. The implication here is that what Wal-Mart has done for your own community, Facebook will do for the web.

The most amusing part of Hodgkinson’s article is a little exercise he shares at the end. He provides a summary of the Facebook privacy policy and suggests you substitute the words “Big Brother” wherever you see “Facebook.”