I agree that the only downside of “dumb” or mediocre people flooding the media, including the internet, is that we won’t be able to discern a genius from a marginally talented person, but this isn’t deliberate, it’s because people relate to the mental or intellectual state they are at, and most people are not geniuses. Therefore, birds of a feather flock together and if there are more average people in the world than exceptional, then expect to see more average people being crowned as geniuses, while the van Goghs starve.

As Nietzsche said in regarding “the flies of the marketplace,” ‘it is the way of the world.’

(As for the person who told you that you are too “critical,” that person needs to get a life! This is exactly the kind of nonsense comment that makes our culture even more stupid.)

>>The question is, is this development to be welcomed or decried? The decriers most common worry is one of dumbing down—that Web 2.0 is yielding a sea of bad online content that threatens to drown the good.

The BBS crowd voiced the above sentiment when Windows came along. The early online adopters echoed the BBS crowd when AOL made it possible for nearly anyone to get online. The ‘old’ computer gurus denounced the new generation of online chat rooms. The early webmasters recoiled in horror when Geocities came along and made it possible for almost anyone to have their own website.

Now it’s Myspace and youtube taking the heat simply because the barrier to entry has been lowered yet again. There’s really very little that’s new about ‘Web 2.0′.

Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand. People seem to have forgotten about Pareto and then wonder why Myspace is filled with space that has been neglected and why Digg is dealing with corruption Thankfully, the web economy is robust enough to weather this storm.

The people that are so excited about how easy it is to have a voice would do well to recall the wise words of Edward R. Murrow. Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

I also appreciate the reference to my dad, but his name is Newton Minow, not Nelson. All best for a Web 3.0 2007.

I am not so sure that your disclaimer about being “off topic” is necessary. Culture impacts the way businesses respond and therefore the emerging “tech culture” has at least an indirect impact on what businesses do, in some cases they may in fact be driving it.

The good, the bad, and the ugly are all relevant vis-a-vis capturing human experience and while there are things humanity might need “saving from” bad content is not one of them.

More to the point – and especially because you reference The Canterbury Tales (which you *should* read; it’s hilarious and beautiful) – the ‘dumbing down’ objection is exactly the one made to movable type. Now just *anyone* can author a book; it’ll lead to dumbing down. And, of course, it did! But, it led to much more as well — including the Canterbury Tales, which would never have found its way to us without the invention of movable type not so long before it was set and printed.

Indeed, Chaucer’s great work – with its endless catalog of ironic portraiture of the present moment – is probably more like youTube than most people would think possible. Now, it’s part of the Canon; once it was popular entertainment.

Your argument is very eloquently stated.

Wanting to be optimistic in nature, I remind myself that diamonds are valued because of their rarity. Perhaps it will be only with having to suffer through the “dumb” will we appreciate the true “diamonds” in Web 2.0