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The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

thebaffler.com

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Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#41

Post by svachalek »

smacktoward wrote: post #13
svachalek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. After skimming a few pages, I was hoping to just skip it and find the discussion about what this article is actually accusing O'Reilly of. I can see why the author may feel threatened by anyone who actually has communication skills.

In fairness to the author, this piece was written for a print publication, The Baffler, and included in that magazine's most recent print issue. Longer-form articles fit better in print than they do online.

OK, thanks to this and a few other intriguing defenses I went back and finished. It does eventually make a real point, although the ratio of actual quotations and other data points to the vaguely FUD-ish storytelling that he starts off with is pretty poor, especially considering the amount of research he claims to have done.

I'm left with the vague feeling that I could probably use the same approach to tear down Gandhi or any other more or less untouchable folk hero by using long tracts of insinuation interspersed with a few phrases in scare quotes.

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#42

Post by tptacek »

potatolicious wrote: post #31
bjhoops1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, what a surprise - the top comment on a HN post comes from a reader who dismisses the post outright despite failing to actually read it in its entirety.

Your ad hominem attack against me is not appreciated, nor is your attempt to treat me as a category and stereotype rather than a real person behind a keyboard. Like others here, I make it a general rule to read everything, and even consulting other sources, before commenting. Like others here also, I had not the time nor the inclination to go through the entirety of a 16,000 word behemoth of writing when the first 8,…

I'm sad 'potatolicious got to say this before I did; he's one of my must-reads on HN. It's also sad how quickly a critique Paul Graham has of the environment on HN gets twisted into another way to degrade the environment on HN.

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#43

Post by tankbot »

smacktoward wrote: post #8
lubujackson wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the whole point is that O'Reilly is rebranding propaganda as "meme-engineering" even though they are technically the same.

I read the article and think the point is deeper than that. I would summarize it like this: Tim O'Reilly's business has changed from selling things (books, conferences) to selling ideologies ("Web 2.0", "government as a framework"). This is a relationship that goes both ways: the books and conferences provide crucial support for the ideologies he sells (the existence of a "Web 2.0" conference can be cited as proof th…

Thank you! I couldn't make it through the whole thing. Too little nourishment per paragraph to complete the daunting trek!

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#45

Post by pnathan »

Metacomment: I don't think that it's a bad thing to consider and reconsider the ideas being pushed and pumped by various parties. Even when the party being critiqued is pushing the agenda you favor.

The article could stand to be a higher-entropy source though. It proved distressingly low-entropy after a while.

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#46

Post by pnathan »

potatolicious wrote: post #3

Good God. I enjoy long prose (in fact, I crave long form writing), but this is interminable. The author treads, and re-treads, and re-treads, the exact same ground paragraph after paragraph, from a slightly different angle each time, making strange, unsubstantiated character attacks each time. I'm pretty sure that ground is just mud now. If anyone has had the stomach to finish this, please let me know if there was ac…

Several points were being made, as I can tell from a single reading. Note that I don't claim to do anything more than summarize, and that, probably badly. Read the original to rebut/clarify my take...

- The open source movement separated from libre source in the pursuit of profits; Mr. O'Reilly was heavily involved in that.

- Mr. O'Reilly has changed & massaged certain words and meanings in a masterful art of propaganda.

- Mr. O'Reilly's influence & the approach he favors has demoted the individual's ability to effectively govern themselves.

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#47

Post by petercooper »

Aside from the actual content, I'm intrigued how working on this sort of content can pay. The author claims to have spent three months (not necessarily full-time, I assume) reading everything O'Reilly has personally written in public and this gigantic article must have taken a good week or two to write and edit alone. That's several thousand dollars of effort there and I can't imagine it ever getting paid back by this article, no matter how good it is (or not).

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#49

Post by achompas »

danso wrote: post #35
teawithcarl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about the (intellectual, sometimes snob troll/badger) Evgeny Morozov. Yet, I've read him enthusiastically for years. On par, he's important. Nothing wrong with sharp dissent. Despite perhaps carving his own "media empire" by knocking Silicon Valley - he speaks truth. Always worth reading. This is the BEST essay I've read in a long time, and genuinely sorts out the history between "open source" a…

Oh please, Morozov's appeal lies almost exclusively in his ability to teardown strawmen of his own creation ("oh look, some stupid startup thinks it can save the whales, isn't Silicon Valley so stupid?") or inciting fear over technological advances by citing obscure studies and anecdotes. He's like an Ann Coulter sans brevity.

This is a disappointing criticism of someone who presents some very interesting ideas. Morozov is definitely guilty of tearing down some absurd strawmen, but that doesn't invalidate his criticisms of, say, SV's "solutionist" culture.

Re: The Meme Hustler - Tim O’Reilly’s crazy talk

#50

Post by zeruch »

It's not his best work by any stretch (its overly dense and repetitive) and some factoids are off the mark, but I do like that he has pointed out that the kind of back-patting altruism everyone likes to pretend is the best reward for their efforts is exposed as the barely upright rationalization for what is otherwise what I call "benign greed". I'm not exempt from it either; I like money, and I like doing interesting things to earn it. If I can make the world a better place for the effort, all the better, but it isn't the raison d'etre, and I won't posture otherwise...a large number of folks in the value do though (possibly to the point of self-denial).
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