EightBlack.

I hope I’m not this irrational when I’m 60.

The Queen of Pop ranted in the UK’s The Sun last week that;

it (the internet) is destroying good music, saying: “The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff”.

“Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision.

“It’s just a means to an end.

“We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet.

“I mean, get out there — communicate.

“Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet.

“Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging.

“I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.

“There’s too much technology available.

“I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

You sort of don’t know where to begin with these sorts of comments.

On one hand, Sir Elton wants the same medium that he’s just loaded his entire 400 track library to closed down (you can now buy all his music via iTunes), the same medium that he streamed a concert to from Madison Square Garden last year and the very same medium that people go to in order to research upcoming concert information and actually buy tickets (via his own and 3rd party websites).

You’d have a better chance of holding back the tide as they say rather than shutting down the internet.

And anyway, hypothetically speaking, what and how on gods earth would you even go about doing it. Its not like George Bush would make a worldwide announcement and say, “I use the Google, we all use the Google. But you know what, we need to change, to flush em out, to smoke em out, to - er, whoops, thats another speech. This internet thing is bad news. We’re closing it. Right now…”

Or something like that.

As if.

Elton baby, this internet thing has grown a lot bigger than anything you’ve smoked or put up your nose. I love the music that made you famous and its a big part of my childhood. But a lot of your current stuff sucks. Its not the internets’ fault if you have lost your “mojo”.

The internet is just another medium. Like radio was. Like TV was. Like print was. Only this time, its not perhaps just another medium - it is THE medium.

You’ve got a website, you sell tickets online, Google has indexed some 582,000 images of you, Yahoo! has indexed some 37 million pages of content related to you and you’re essentially blaming it for the fact that your last record tanked with only 100,000 copies being sold. Thanks to a little device called the iPod, there’s a whole generation of people who are now able to listen (and consume) your music.

I’d suggest you put on your tiara again and have another tantrum. It’s futile but it will make you feel better.

I remember a few years ago my sister and I were both living overseas. My mother, on one of those weekly calls, casually told me that she and my father had decided to “get the internet”.

“Really…” I said, knowing exactly where this was going.

“Yes”, she said. “We got a thing in the mail and it said we could have internet for $40 dollars a month”. Or something like this.

I then asked her casually what she was going to do as far as a computer went.

“Oh no” she said. We don’t want a computer, we just want the internet”.

I think I muttered the words “silly cow” or something equally as derogatory down the phone.

I know the “older” generation are struggling with the whole technology thing. But equally, there are 70 year olds booking round the world trips online, transferring and managing all their money online, and talking to their kids and grandkids via Skype.

Calling yourself a “luddite” is just plain lazy. Age is irrelevant. And technology is the very thing that has made it so.

(Image courtesy The BBC, UK) 

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 5th, 2007 at 11:44 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.