Re: <nettime> After nettime-bold, the Internet (Andrew Orlowski)

[Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>]

Caveat lector: The Register is a decent pub, but everything written by  
Orlowski is only useful as virtual toilet paper. Since he started  
writing for them he's been focusing so specifically on attacking the  
blogging world that I have to wonder if there's some personal history  
there, or maybe just a sense of exclusion left over from a difficult  
childhood. All his stories seem to be in some way fixated on taking  
down the blogosphere, whether coining the term "googlewash" or painting  
the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference as some elitist cabal. (You  
can be sure that in the piece below, when he says "techno-utopians", he  
means "bloggers".) On top of that, a lot of his writing has this odd  
tone of unintentional paranoia that makes me wonder if he maintains an  
enemies list.

The piece about the Internet dying isn't about what Lawrence Lessig  
thinks. It's about what Orlowski thinks, and his effort to use a bigger  
name to lend the air of authority to his ideas. Lessig himself pointed  
out the misquotation:

http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_05.shtml#001190

Lessig's concern about the infrastructure is quite legitimate. (If you  
want to read it from the original source, go to  
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/ 
2003_05.shtml#001180.) But the rest of Orlowski's complaints just seem  
like petty griping. Yeah, so too many web-sites have popup windows.  
Install a decent web browser -- they're free, you know. So some  
companies waste time on email. Pay some college student to implement  
Ultimate BBS for you, or maybe a wiki.

It's like Orlowski's one of those grumpy old men who complains about  
how they don't make 'em like they used to. Except for the fact that a  
few decades ago, they didn't make 'em at all. So what's he complaining  
about, exactly?

Francis



On Sunday, June 1, 2003, at 10:29  PM, geert lovink wrote:

> It is not only nettime-bold that died, it is the Internet as a whole,  
 <...>


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net