Things That Annoy Me To Distraction While I’m Trying To Get Work Done
Posted on November 20, 2009 by andrew
1) Terrible analogies which undermine otherwise valid points
I’m reading the chapter entitled “Realising the Democratic Potential of the Internet” from Coleman and Blumler’s The Internet and Democratic Citizenship. They describe a feature on the White House’s website which allows the user to “Send a message to the President,” and explain that it doesn’t lead to valid interaction or promote democracy. Fair enough.
Then the authors write, “Authentic acknowledgement lies in the irregular, non-instant response, just as real music lies in the instrument that is not preprogrammed to have a perfectly regular beat.”
The two situations aren’t remotely analogous unless you subscribe to a bizarrely limited and thoroughly antiquated definition of ‘real music.’ Now I’m stuck indignantly thinking of all the great music classified as unreal by Coleman and Blumler rather than finishing this article in order to write my paper.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under Media, books, music, the internets
Comments
Leave a Reply
