Saturday, October 20, 2007

A million monkeys at a million keyboards...

Ten Zen Monkeys has had ten professional writers consider the big question-

Is the internet good for writers and writing?

They recieved a variety of responses: pro, anti, and in-between. It does sound like the net's been bad in terms of the pay-scale for professional writers. Also, I'd say the net is overall sort of good for writers and bad for writing. The Internet is sort of like cable-access television for me; it's strangely compelling, often really lousy, and I'd say the overall quality is just not up there with the so-called mainstream media. But, every now and again, you find something that's so bizarre, or twisted, or just plain fascinating, that you can't look away.

In general though, I'd say that we're not going to get great writing or writers out of this infernal machine. The Internet has made me much more appreciative of what editors do. And there's just way too much 'content' out there, with so much of it somehow still lacking in content. Every generation has a handful of great writers and artists, but I have no idea how we will find them in either the cyber-wilderness or the all-swallowing Media Borg.

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