Shakespeare and those damn monkeys again

I thought we were past tired polemics about bloggers being a waste of time, but Michael Skapinker in the Financial Times pulls out all the hoary cliches:

Like anyone who spends much of his waking time on the internet, I know it is divided into two parts: the handful of sites that help you run your life, catch up on the news and listen to your favourite tunes – and the remainder, which is mostly inconsequential rubbish.

Ms Delahaye Paine said: “A new blog is created about once every two seconds.” That was in April. By now it is no doubt one every second. How many are read by anyone other than the blogger? How many are worth reading?

A few weeks ago, I heard the genome pioneer Craig Venter ask whether we remembered the story about how monkeys, given keyboards and endless time, would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Well, he said, the internet shows it is not true.

As far as I’m aware, tens of thousands of professional journalists over the last 150 years have also failed to produce anything approaching Shakespeare as well. That’s neither here nor there. Fortunately, however imperfectly, the FT recognizes the value of blogs, with more springing up on its site all the time. And people with eyes to see at One Southwark Bridge (and I know there are some there) can see that there are many blogs that outrun business newspapers on particular topics: think Brad DeLong, Tyler Cowen, Calculated Risk, etc, etc.

One thought on “Shakespeare and those damn monkeys again

  1. KD Paine

    Actually, there seems to be a new wave of “blogs don’t matter” thinking.. According to this piece in Ragan’s Grapevine http://www.raganenewsstand.com/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=DB84291E7DBE4172B36838C40038E371&SiteID=8313A84581F8448F8C822CE083C3619C
    What is it about open, honest conversations that makes people want to run and hide their head in the sands of yesteryear?

    Reply

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