Free to be you and me
From Spiegel, a newspaper, and its interview with Wired editor-in-chief and author of the new book Free* Chris Anderson, in which he talks some crazy:
Anderson: Sorry, I don’t use the word media. I don’t use the word news. I don’t think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like a horseless carriage.
Your apology is not accepted! Also, where do you live that your way is regularly impeded by horseless carriages? Fucking San Francisco hipsters. I bet those are fixed-gear carriages, too.
Anderson: There are no other words. We’re in one of those strange eras where the words of the last century don’t have meaning.
Okay, Timothy Leary! Is this “strange era” called “book promotion” or “consulting”? I dropped out of Harvard by going to community college.
If Jeff Jarvis and Terrence McKenna had a baby we would still have a 20th-century word for “I want to punch that baby in the beard.” (In fairness, it’s probably German.)
I read lots of articles from mainstream media but I don’t go to mainstream media directly to read it.
Which is why I’ll be republishing the entire content stream of Wired.com here on my own blog.
It’s going to take us a decade or two to figure out what it is we’re doing.
“But in the meantime, buy my book!”
We make millions of dollars in revenues, and we decide whether we want to be profitable or not.
Spoiler: They decide to be profitable.
We’ve tried paying some of our bloggers and they thought it was insulting.
Really, it’s an honor just to be aggregated.
In the past, the media was a full-time job. But maybe the media is going to be a part time job.
Chris, I’m pretty sure Conde will let you go on vacation if you just ask. Maybe you could tell them you’re writing a book?
* I’ll make real money if you buy it on Amazon: Free: The Future of a Radical Price (available for $27 in hardcover; $10 on Kindle) but not if you pay $0 to read it on Scribd.
Image: Carito Orellana
brhfl
Bizarre… I snagged it when it was free on Kindle, but haven’t gotten all the way through it yet… He just seems to get weirder and weirder as he pops up more and more in the nonexistant media…
Jul 29, 2009 @ 10:03 am
Jason Vaughn
I can’t wait for the media to become just a part-time job- I’ll have plenty of time to explore my real passions for substitute teaching, office temping and living with my parents!
Jul 29, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
Charles Shopsin
If he doesn’t use the word media anymore, how does he explain the last quote?
Jul 29, 2009 @ 1:40 pm
joflow
The worst part is that it was completely unprovoked, the interviewer NEVER EVEN SAID the word “media”. What an asshole (Anderson, obviously). The interviewer asked about newspapers, which are a thing that actually exist and have not yet surpassed their earthly nomenclature and moved on to be “antique paper informants” or whatever the fuck, and this pompous asshole goes off about “media”, which nobody even said, and claims those words are meaningless now. Chris Anderson, you are The Worst.
I hope your house catches on fire, and someone calls the “Fire Department” but per your slack-jawed mouth-breathing explanation, that’s a description that’s in one of those “strange eras” from the last century and nobody knows what it means (or meant) and you die in a fire because WORDZ BE TRIPPIN’ FOR REALZ IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM, AMIRITE!?!
Jul 30, 2009 @ 4:34 am