Mass media's last blast is an article crowing about the imminent death of mass media. I think this is overstatement but ultimately, the face of technology/entertainment/media/culture is undoubtedly undergoing a revolution. Many question the reason box office receipts are falling year over year (in aggregate). It's not simply because we think the movies are too liberal/conservative or that we all have iPods or cost or poor moviegoing experience. It's all of those at once. Today's home theaters rival what the average theater in a small town can produce. How many people now have surround sound, big screens and dvd players vs. 5 or 10 years ago? Then they were a rarety reserved for audiophiles and wealthy people. Now they're commonplace and not nearly as expensive as they once were. The author is otherwise correct about the "bottoms up" democratic nature of social networking. In the future, people will be very famous but narrowly so. You'll have celebrities in a particular genre of music that will be known worldwide but only by fans of that genre. The rest of the time they'll be totally anonymous. We will always have big movie stars like Tom Cruise who are known to everyone everywhere but they won't be famous in the sense that they are today. Movie revenues may drop to the point that they cannot command the $20M per film.
This is very strange...
I'm an average guy with an average life. I have a few more kids than most but for the most part I'm just an anonymous lumpenprole toiling away in obscurity both professionally and on this blog. To say my life follows a certain routine is like saying " The Hindenburg caught fire." That is to say, technically accurate but wildly understates the truth. In any event, I just received a call from The Wife. To wit: "Did you order something?" "No, why?" "There's something here for you." "Uh, box, bag, envelope, singing telegram?" "It's a box" "Who's is from?" "It's from [Name redacted pending confession or further investigation]" "Who?" "(repeats name)" "No idea. Never heard of him." A quick google search later I find that the sender's return address is in the wilds of northern Pennsylvania. A place I have never visited. "Open it." "W...
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