Monday, August 11, 2008

Brooks No Interference

Last Thursday, David Brooks' op-ed piece, Lord of the Memes, in The New York Times echoed some views I've expressed here before. Specifically, Brooks says:

Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it.

[...]

Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.

In my post from Feb. 5, 2007, The Geeks vs the Heads, I lamented the triumph of Apple, the computer company, over Apple, the Beatles' music company, in their long-standing trademark litigation. I said:
This is the triumph of medium over message. The company that controls the technology dominates over the company that creates the actual content.
I don't always agree with Brooks, but I almost always find his columns interesting and thought-provoking.

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