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09 August 2006

Assault of the dead trees

Following a couple of recent comment pieces in the dead-tree organ known as the Independent, pieces which consisted entirely of transparent sideswipes at bloggers who are capable of doing to the same degree - and often-times to a much higher degree, for free - what dead-tree columnists do for vast sums of cash, argument from the UK blog world soon came in the form of this, this and this.

Until now, The Antagonist has steered clear of entering such debate, favouring instead taking on the likes of the Home Secretary, and winning.

Now though, long time Brit-blogger nosemonkey - aka J Clive Matthews, who revealed the name behind the nosemonkey moniker in the hope of having more luck blagging paid work from his blogging efforts, has officially lost the plot and categorically stated in the Press Gazette something which cannot go unchallenged:

"Blogs cannot and will not threaten newspapers."

Were such nonsense true, newspapers wouldn't be trying to turn themselves into blogs and a whole world of wonderment could be entered imagining the reasons why dead-tree columnists would feel such a compelling need to dedicate their valuable column inches to hammering home a point that, by their own 'better-than-bloggers-because-we're-paid-to-do-it' judgement, didn't need making.

Blogs, Internet multimedia technologies such as flickr.com and youtube.com, along with the underlying Internet infrastructure on which these systems operate, present the biggest threat to every capitalist mode of media production in existence, bar none, than the corporate world will dare admit. The capitalists know it and, in reality, there is absolutely no denying it.

3 comments:

Shahid said...

Which is why before long, they'll shut us all down.

They will instigate some "terror attack" or threat of it on the Internet, and that will be their pre-text to "restrict our freedoms" because "times have changed" and we are vulnerable to a new form of "international terrorism"

You've noticed how the BBC has modified its news and how google gives no clues. Well, you've probably read 1984 and you probably remember that's what Winston did for a living, re-writing history at the "Minitrue"

The Antagonist said...

The terrorists want to take away our freedoms and the terrorists *are* taking away our freedoms. It's about as honest as they've ever been!

Every bit of legislation that passes, each increase in (lord) levy of taxes, and each fraction of a percentage point on interest rates steals away a little bit of working class liberty for even less working class security.

Everyone is working harder, for longer, for less. No healthcare, no dental care and no pension when you to pensionable age, state or private because, lest we forget, the price of shares can go down as well as up, whether New Labour promoted everyone to the middle class, or not.

Meanwhile, their way of life, continues much as it has done for a good while now.

As for shutting us all down, they will no doubt shut a few down, or co-opt them in some way, much as any other form of information dissemination medium has been co-opted from the printing press, to radio, to TV and now the corporate Internet. Indeed, bloggers won't have failed to notice the recent rise to prominence of one or two bloggers of a right-leaning nature, now spinning their self-righteous ravings to an altogether bigger audience and purporting to be representative of the blog genre as a whole.

But, people aren't stupid, no matter what the rule-makers like to think and resistance movements existed a long time before the Internet. When the resistance includes everyone forced to live under the tyranny imposed by the private profit of the few, you can guarantee things are going to get interesting.

If recent well-hidden reports from various parts of the Middle East are anything to go by, it's not long before the guns of British and American troops turn to point at the Masters of War.

--
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

- Bob Dylan

salman said...

@shahid
Well it would appear that 3 years and 3 months later they still haven't shut you down - you did that yourself.