In an essay look­ing at the chang­ing roles tech­nol­ogy takes in our lives and how this changes us, Ben­jamin Kunkel artic­u­lates what many jour­nal­ists have tried and failed to do in recent times: pro­duce an expres­sive piece about the ‘infor­ma­tion age’ with­out resort­ing to tired analo­gies and scaremongering.

Cri­tiques, as opposed to mere descrip­tions, of inter­net cul­ture empha­size the infor­mal­ity or (more judg­men­tally) the vul­gar­ity of our promis­cu­ous mes­sages. These com­mu­ni­ca­tions, in their ease, inex­pen­sive­ness, and abun­dance, suf­fer less pres­sure than before to be or seem impor­tant, mean­ing­ful, or definitive—in other words, to last in our minds. In their clam­orous com­pe­ti­tion with one another, they more often strive to be the first noticed. […]

My hope is that these reminders will keep me from suc­cumb­ing any fur­ther to a pas­time that has already cut deeper into my more seri­ous read­ing and writ­ing than I’d like, and that has led me to par­tic­i­pate in the great ongo­ing sui­cide (by free­load­ing con­tent) of the intel­lec­tual class.

Stat­ing that a blogger’s “pop­u­lar­ity is no index of their wor­thi­ness”, Kunkel points to more truths with these ‘five secrets’ from Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine:

  1. Not every­one has some­thing valu­able to say.
  2. Few peo­ple have any­thing orig­i­nal to say.
  3. Only a hand­ful of peo­ple know how to write well.
  4. Most peo­ple will do almost any­thing to be liked.
  5. “Cus­tomers” are always right, but “peo­ple” aren’t.