Convenience => Less Value?

January 21, 2003

if we make something easier to do, does it make it less valuable? i recall lots of articles on how blogging has certainly increased the quantity of websites, while likely decreasing the quality. what you get is a bunch of people posting things that are self-indulgent, poorly-thought-out, and badly designed. take, for instance, this webpage. if i was publishing it via normal means (i.e. books, magazines), i would certainly make sure to check the spelling, fine-tune the type, and review my ideas myself and with others. but i will do no such thing for the sake of immediacy and, perhaps, the sake of doing it at all . . .
perhaps in the future we will need to differentiate content created for "artistic" purposes from that created for "communicative" purposes. already we're seeing the convergence of movies/TV shows and commercials. the upcoming super bowl is viewed by many simply for the commercials, which can be more entertaining than the game some years. maybe this is something the market can work out itself . . . anyway, this post would probably not fit in either category, so it may be a moot point . . . how about a "blathering crap" category?

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Comments

  1. Philip Dhingra:

    If we make something easier to do, we don’t make it less valuable, just more possible.

    Blogging’s convenience hasn’t ruined the quality of potential novelists at all, but enabled those whose voices would’ve otherwise been kept quiet, to speak without rebuke from copyeditors, publishers, and a discerning public.

  2. Bob:

    It’s funny how in the two years since this post, blogging has hit the mainstream and become much more legitimate in the eyes of the media and the public.

    It’s certainly helped me become a better writer, and I have also come to believe in the power of sheer volume to bubble quality to the top; the company we work for depends on it, after all.

    It loses a certain romantic nobility, however, and an elegance, when it becomes something you can do without thought. If everyone were writing anyway, I think the end product would be more valuable if the process were difficult; but you’re right, the point is that most bloggers wouldn’t write otherwise, just like myself.

  3. Bob:

    How Google is destroying culture…

    Admittedly, back in the days when research necessitated opening dozens of books in hopes of finding useful information, no one read each tome cover to cover. It is also fair to say that given how scattershot our searches sometimes were, we often missed what we were looking for. But that said, we also happened upon issues that proved more interesting than our original queries. Today’s snippet literacy efficiently keeps us on the straight and narrow path, with little opportunity for fortuitous side trips.

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