Comments on: Duncan Riley Takes on an Ill, 88 Year-Old Nobel Prize Winner: Take a Guess Who Actually Has a Point

By: Web Meets World: Tim O’Reilly’s Bullshit Keynote : The Drama 2.0 Show

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:48:46 +0000

[...] live in challenging times and in fact, I couldn’t help but note that O’Reilly mentions many of the same types of challenges I’ve been using to highlight just how out of touch with reality Web 2.0 [...]

By: Is Duncan Riley Web 2.0’s Scott McClellan? : The Drama 2.0 Show

Is Duncan Riley Web 2.0’s Scott McClellan? : The Drama 2.0 Show — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 02:05:25 +0000

[...] his tenure at TechCrunch, I was never a big fan of Duncan Riley. His posts were utterly atrocious and I was just one of many who questioned Michael Arrington’s sanity for keeping Duncan on [...]

By: The Truthiness According to Wikipedia : The Drama 2.0 Show

The Truthiness According to Wikipedia : The Drama 2.0 Show — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:03:14 +0000

[...] that the “democratization” of the Internet is somehow making the world a better place just doesn’t seem to be reflected in the world around us and I think significant dangers do arise when knowledge sourced from individuals who are educated, [...]

By: Introducing Another Kool Aid Drinker : The Drama 2.0 Show

Introducing Another Kool Aid Drinker : The Drama 2.0 Show — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 22:40:02 +0000

[...] most passionate kool aid drinkers want to make sure that no drop of kool aid goes unsipped. From Duncan Riley to Jason Ervin, as the clock ticks the kool aid drinkers seem to get more aggressive in their kool [...]

By: Duncan Riley: “No I am not scared and neither should you be!” : The Drama 2.0 Show

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:04:13 +0000

[...] to panic. Although I was unable to read his statement because it was issued in a language that a cultural elitist such as myself cannot understand, the following translations were provided to me: There is no [...]

By: Debbie Davies

Debbie Davies — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:36:09 +0000

What’s to pick apart in Duncan Riley’s posts? He’s perfect for Techcrunch. So is the new recruit Erick Schonfeld. Mike knows what he’s doing with Techcrunch. He’s making money, not trying to win a literary prize. That’s why Techcrunch is written for the masses by semi-literate idiots. Please Drama 2.0, write about something else or write nothing at all.

By: Eric Rice

Eric Rice — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 20:37:27 +0000

We should not mistake the existence of volumes of information with the presence of knowledge and wisdom.

/shaking my head at this one

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:08:30 +0000

Duncan Riley headed towards the DeadPool!?

By: Michael Camilleri

Michael Camilleri — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:21:00 +0000

My immediate response to Duncan’s comments is that he’s missed the point entirely. Her speech has almost nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with the importance, indeed necessity, of literature. You get the feeling even he realises it when he throws in lamely at the end of the post:

The Guardian has the full text of Lessing’s speech here, which I note aside from the internet comments is a great, and often inspiring read.

However, to give Duncan’s argument more credit than it deserves and to try to engage with it, I think you miss the biggest problem with his post, Drama, and that’s to say he does nothing to counter Lessing’s point in that paragraph: the Internet is, for most people, made up of a lot of very short, inane, unimportant content and this content does nothing to enrich their lives. That people are sharing a lot of very short, inane, unimportant content with a whole range of other people in a way they weren’t able to do before does not make the content any richer than it was when only those at the dinner table were subjected to it.

It also does nothing to disprove her point to say there are valuable sources of information on the Internet. She would only be wrong if this was what the Internet was for the majority of people. But it’s not. It’s MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and blogs about fragments of culture that interest them. It’s not about expanding their world: it’s about more deeply immersing themselves in their own little corner.

By: Garth

Garth — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 12:36:30 +0000

Well said … the arrogance of the Web 2.0 crowd is sometimes too much.