We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day “Let me say it again, the only newspapers around in the future will be very upmarket, all the downmarket stuff being more readily available on the internet or in magazines made of pulped squirrels that will be handed out free to the unemployable and the insane.”
– Bryan Appleyard. Those squirrels cannot catch a break.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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TBH I don’t see any future for print news at all. I haven’t bought one in a very long time. I get my news off the web. I don’t see any reason to get it any other way.
Also TBH I can’t see why anyone watches TV news programmes either, but then I don’t see why anyone watches TV documentaries come to that. The information density is always very low compared to reading. TV is a good storytelling medium, but not much cop as an information transmission medium. It was better than newsreels, but the web is better than TV. I expect TV news to go the way of the newsreel, along with the newspaper.
Ian, yep. I’d add that radio will probably outlast TV because in some ways it is less intrusive. It is much easier to do the ironing or feed the baby when you are listening to the radio than watching the gogglebox.
I’ve been hearing stories about the “paperless” office for some two decades, meanwhile the consumption of paper in offices has surged.
Same with “paperless” newspapers. It’s not happening. Not in the forseeable future.
I have to agree, Jacob. And I think Brian Appleyard has it exactly the wrong way round. It’s the downmarket papers that will survive any cull that does occur. White Van Man isn’t about to start leaving a laptop on his dashboard any time soon, let alone carry one around a building site for a quick butcher’s at the sports pages during his tea break.
I think Appleyard is 100% correct. I had my ‘white van man’ painter/decorator ask to log his laptop onto my wireless network yesterday so he could get sports results 🙂
I do not disagree with many, if not all, of the thoughts posted in this forum. However, an overriding premise could be that given the various innate talents or lack there of, for the population in total. Government is the only thing left to step in a place where humanitarianism should go freely , because greed, selfish ideals, or just “i just don’t care attitudes” prevail in a percentage of the live free or die group. So the end game is a Global mess!
There will always be a future for newspapers … gotta have something to wrap my Sea Kittens(Link) in.
Would he care to suggest a couple of those “upmarket” rags? Today, even the Wall St. Journal makes room for rabid moonbats in the editorial pages.
We have the pulped-squirrel newspaper here in Seattle – it’s called REAL CHANGE and is vended on streetcorners by alchoholics, the insane and one or two wily opportunists.
I looked inside it once and noted that the content was mostly Trostskyite.