8 comments

• 

  Richard Bennett

  8 months ago

  Is this review meant to be ironic? Siegel's central argument is that Internet-enabled expressive forms such as diary blogging tend to reinforce a pre-existing cultural shift toward narcissism and conformity. Your extensive self-quotation above tends to validate that criticism.
  
  There is a great deal of negative to go along with the Internet's positives, and it's foolish to dismiss critics who have the nerve to buck the trend of Internet boosterism to expose it. Siegel didn't attempt to write a "balanced" assessment of the Internet's social impact as enough people are already doing the rah rah stuff.
  
  I found his analysis of Internet profiteering, hysteria, and amateurism insightful, if not especially moderate. And his description of some of Tim O'Reilly's incoherent technobabble priceless: "If your toaster could write a sentence, this is the kind of sentence it would write."
  reply
• 

  autodidact

  8 months ago

  i think the internet is also adulterating our precious bodily fluids.
  reply
• 

  Adam Thierer

  8 months ago

  Richard... Yes, I stand guilty as charged of excessive self-quotation in this review, but I dispute your characterization of it in this case as narcissistic. Rather, I was trying to make it clear that my earlier critiques of Postman, Keen, and Sunstein applied in equal measure to Siegel's work. I am currently working on a much longer essay attempting to connecting the dots between the Internet pessimists over the past decade and this book review was largely an effort to fit Siegel into that picture and start sketching out that major themes they have developed and which I plan on responding to in that longer article.
  
  Second, I think you have read enough of my other work here on this blog to know that I generally agree with your statement that "There is a great deal of negative to go along with the Internet's positives" and that the Internet optimists are often guilty of pollyanna-ism. In the case of some, it borders on techno-Rousseauian psycho-babble. All this crap about the Internet remaking man and changing human nature is just that -- crap. Likewise, I believe all this talk about the Long Tail being "the future of business" and of Wikinomics "changing everything through mass collaboration," goes much, much too far. I've given these folks endless grief through the years for such irrational exuberance. The truth is somewhere in between the two extremes.
  
  However, when you chide me for being “foolish to dismiss critics who have the nerve to buck the trend of Internet boosterism to expose it,” I will stand by every word of what I have said about Keen and Siegel here because in an attempt to fight one type of hysteria they are guilty of engaging in another. Their critiques are just so over-the-top Chicken Little-ish and occasionally outright Luddite-ish that it is very difficult to take them seriously. What the techno-pessimists and Internet skeptics need is a better spokesman. Nick Carr is about the best they’ve got, but they need others who can articulate -- in a clear, level-headed way -- the legitimate concerns about certain Net pathologies or disruptive effects on our economy and culture. If there are others who you believe have made such critiques that I should be considering, please bring them to my attention. I want to make sure I give the Net pessimists a fair hearing in my longer article on this subject.
  reply
• 

  Richard Bennett

  8 months ago

  Pardon the delay in this response - DISQUS seems to be acting up: the web site says this blog has three comments, but when I click on the comments link, it only shows one. I had to go the DISQUS web site http://tlf.disqus.com/book_review_lee_siegelas_... to see the comments. I've disabled DISQUS on my blog because of this misbehavior. Anyhow.
  
  Is it useful to distinguish Internet commentary into pro and con sides? This is pretty much what the writers themselves are doing, either engaging in boosterism or in counter-boosterism, but what's lacking is somebody who's willing to rise above the spats and write a comprehensive analysis of the thing as a whole. It should be more or less self-evident that the Internet has produced multiple effects, some good and some bad, so any attempt to paint it one way or the other is going to fail.
  
  But perhaps that's too large a topic, so one might reduce it to the scope of blogs, say, or social networking, or some other slice.
  
  Siegel does something very interesting insofar as he attempts to put the Internet into a cultural context, hence all the commentary about camera angles in the movies and such helps provide the frame.
  reply
• 

  Lee D

  8 months ago

  Regarding Siegel 's assertion that "Culture needs authoritative institutions," what about when those authorities are patently full of shit? We don't need to move past the authorities on 24-hour network news to see hysterical bloviating, biased opinions, and just plain lies. Never mind his notion that mainstream media is by and large "unbiased, rational, intelligent, and comprehensive."
  
  If anything, the rational voices of commenters on the Internet are better at pointing out the Emperor's lack of clothes than media tied to commercial interests are.
  
  I enjoyed your review immensely, Adam, and will make a point to read Siegel's book, as I think it's salutary to expose oneself to as many POV as possible.
  reply
• 

  Locksmith Madison

  4 months ago

  Nice Book. A good review by you. I will definitely read it. Thanks
  reply
• 

  Dr David Black

  2 weeks ago

  Why not make up our own minds about issues that are important.
  Dr.David Black
  www.blackchiropractic.com.au
  reply
• 

  chiropractic training

  3 days ago

  I totally agree with you that we all need to put down our pens (or rather our keyboards for this matter), and understand that we are doing great harm to those journalists, institutions, or other enlightened few who are really providing the critical and scrutinizing function so essential for a healthy democracy and culture, because with such actions we are tearing instead of building.
  reply