Elton Hates Internet!!

It's been quite some time since I did an Arkiver's Reflections, I got kind of in the mood for one...

So, Elton John hates the Internet!! I'm shocked. Seriously, has any new medium ever not been complained about, hated, decried, defamed, or just generally beat upon by the generation that grew up on the medium before? For those who don't remember, history is doomed to repeat itself, but you'd think with each new wave of new technology coming faster and faster, that some people would finally start remembering this. It must've been different when thousands of years of written language were suddenly replaced with the printing press. Or when a couple hundred years saw the printing press at least partially supplanted by radio... and then a few dozen, TV... etc.

At the risk of over-generalizing, it seems a pretty well established pattern that as each generation ages, they turn on the generation after them, and the things that generation is into. I hope not to be one of those folks myself. I can remember every single interest I had, every hobby, being described as "bad for you," by concerned parents in the media. So, my apologies to those who refrained from participating in this, but I mean, c'mon. The generation of parents now exclaiming against instant messaging, YouTube, MySpace, etc., this is the generation that screamed for the Beatles and Elvis. And let's not forget what the concerned parents of the day back then said. Immorality. Delinquency.

Give me a friggin' break already...

READ MORE AFTER THE JUMP

The internet is a wonderful, crass, glorious mess. It's all of the bad, all of the good of the human race. It's always on. Every conspiracy nutcase, right and left wing. Every anti-abortion activist, every Impeach-Busher. The internet is, it seems to me, the human mind, made manifest. That there's a lot of bad to crud up the good doesn't surprise me at all. Which brings me to this ever-so-ironic posting on one of my favorite TV news sites...

Yes, the internet has bad stuff. "Critical" thought that's really just bashing and negativity with a prettier label. But there is critical, real critical, thinking out there too. There are creative wonderful things out there, things that were shut out in the "mediated" media/mediums of the past. I like Elton John's music, at least some of it, but there's also plenty better out there. And furthermore, I think there's better music out there, wilder more creative interesting music, than the record labels have ever let us hear. The record labels are, like Elton, stuck in the past... where they were able to tell people what to think, what to like. Even if it was only ever just OK.

The internet, to me, represents real freedom of thought, for the human race. The freedom to choose our own good and bad. It's unfiltered, and that's its greatest strength. People who bemoan the lack of those filters miss the point, because that very lack is the point. Take a drink from the firehose, let yourself get lost in that flood of the human mind. It's certainly raw, messy, and not very nice at times. But the one thing it is, is real. Even poseur "rock stars," like Elton John, are real, and you can find that reality, that authenticity, on the net, in a way you never could via magazines, or CDs, or the radio.

I've been having a lot of fun now with the podcasts here on the Arkive. And they are certainly not "professional quality" audio or anything. But they are a look into the reality of the synching community, of who we are, and of what matters and interests us. Where would you ever have found that, prior to the Internet?

Me, I say bring it on. The filters will probably make a come back, just because you can't drink from the firehose without choking. But when they do come back, they'll be looser, they'll have to answer to us, the viewers. That may scare a lot of "professional" entertainers, because ever since the rise of mass media, it's been an Us/Them (little Pink Floyd reference there) divide. They don't want to come back to just being part of them, the "great unwashed masses," whose idea of creativity is a Sanjaya performance. Maybe Sanjaya is a step backward, I don't know... but for every Sanjaya, there's gotta be some diamonds out there. What are yours? What great new things has the internet shown you lately?

I'm curious...

peace,