Ken Burns on story: a short film

Via Kottke #

Creative destruction in contemporary culture

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott and David Carr wrestle with this one..

The web is its own thing: thinking about a Seth Godin post

Or, expecting more from Seth.

I know I’m walking on thin ice here as he has no doubt thousands of avid readers and supporters, but I find myself having to be a little critical of Seth Godin’s post today.

I’m not often taken by Seth’s daily dish #. There’s nothing wrong with the advice that he serves up, it’s just that there’s a lot of stuff that is irrelevant to me and my work. Relevance is important, because as he points out in a list in today’s post which I’ll get to in a minute, one should “Focus on the scarce resource online: attention.” And of course, just like that TV show, if I don’t like what I’m seeing I can change the channel.

I followed a Tweet that led me to today’s post from Seth, and it caught my eye because I’m always irritated by messages that emanate from social media marketing companies or SEO companies that promise the earth but actually offer very little, and at first his post struck a chord with me. And by the way, I’m not suggesting that Seth is even remotely in the same camp as those folks I just mentioned. Still, I felt a discomfort with his list #.

It’s a comprehensive list and was no doubt crafted by Seth to suit his audience, one that he surely knows by now, although I feel that the title is relevant only to those who want to do that (its title is How To Make Money Online.) And those that want to do that will no doubt be spurred on further after reading his post, for better or for worse. For everyone else, I’m not so sure of its value.

As I went over the list a few times I found it becoming more meaningless with each pass. It felt ridiculously outdated. And there’s my, hopefully mild, diss on Seth. It would also be a diss on any readers who think that the list is important in 2012 though.

Here’s why: Do we still not understand how the web works and how people use it? In 2012? Do we still need these self-help style lists? If we do, then unfortunately we haven’t come very far since the advent of the world wide web in the 1990′s.

We’ve had Web 1.0, and we’ve had Web 2.0 but there won’t be a Web 3.0. We now have Mobile. Seth’s list may have better served his audience if he’d made that the subject and the content.