Jimbo debates Andrew Keen Options

[tarantino]

Andrew Keen on why “the Internet is ideology”

One of the mistakes we make about the Internet is that it’s technology. It isn’t; it’s ideology. The Internet was built by people who questioned authority. The Internet is bound up in a fundamental assault on the notion of expertise, on what Jimmy calls “the mainstream media,” which includes shows like this, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. And the idea that representative democracy, experts — whether in media, in politics, in the arts, in legal affairs, in intellectual affairs — are unreliable and need to be replaced by what Jimmy calls “the people” is deeply dangerous.

What I most fear about the Internet — which…we all use; I’m as addicted as everybody else — is the way we take this technology, which has no center, is flattened, has done away with authority and expertise — we take this technology to prove the ideological, idealized theories of Jimmy Wales. The truth is, we need expertise, we need authority, we need to remind ourselves of the foundations of representative democracy.

[Daniel Brandt]

Farhad Manjoo is an idiot, and he's devious. Don't ever let him interview you. He's the one who declared in 2002, when Google-Watch.org started, that I must be a nut case because I don't like Google. His Salon piece set the "Daniel Brandt the nut case who doesn't like Google" meme in concrete for years to come.

I mention it here (scroll down a bit). There's a photo of Jimbo across from the photo of Manjoo. That's because they're more alike than different. SlimVirgin cited Manjoo and the Beasley site when she started that stub on me in September 2005. There were no rules on Wikipedia, SlimVirgin had her own agenda, and Jimbo backed her up. I will never forgive Beasley, I will never forgive Manjoo, I will never forgive SlimVirgin, and I will never forgive Jimbo.

On the Internet, if you are the first one to be right about something (like I was right about Google in 2002), that's the same as being wrong.

And people wonder why I don't talk to cyberspace journalists these days unless they already have a good track record with me...