This is why I still read: Mr. Keen's The Cult of the Amateur fleshed out the job loss and economic wreckage caused by "free" media. That bad feeling in the back of my mind when I had to admit to Mom that I get most of my news from the internet is both real and sensible guilt.
On the other hand...radio and television were "free" media long before file downloading. Have we as a society just moved to the next information pipeline and prefer it to resemble radio/tv more than we prefer it to resemble books/newspapers?
I struggle with the ideas that Mr. Keen presented, primarily in that I see the problem but not how I can effectively act toward a solution. The pipeline referenced earlier carries a tremendous flow of potential disaster over me, including environmental collapse and continued war along the same fault lines.
At the same time, I find myself horrified by the idea that you can improve literature by breaking it down and remixing it. How is a fortune-cookie Shakespearean misquote improved by being translated by a someone who didn't understand the original in the first place and illustrated by stolen clip art?
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