I must admit, I was a little baffled by Tony Hung’s post on Deep Jive Interests where he laments the routine stealing of copyrighted images by Chinese newspapers. Hung seems to be arguing that a reverence for ownership and private property are universal and ahistorical truths, as if these things have been and always will be so. As I noted in the comments, why is it so surprising that a culture that is steeped in both communism and feudalism would not valorise private property in the same way we would? Is it really so complicated to understand that different political and cultural systems will value different things?

It is precisely moments like these that make me worry about how the centralisation of new media and Web 2.0 technologies in the West is yet another layer to add to the whole centre-metropolis dynamic that already exists between West and East, North and South. What was disturbing about this post was that is reaffirms my belief that most people feel that a Western-style democratic capitalism is the be-all and end-all of everything. Difference, it seems, is even harder to engage in the ideologically homogeneous world of Web 2.0.

{Update}: I think I may have actually expressed myself better in the comments section of the original post, so you might want to read that instead.

There was a predictably derisive reaction today to comments made by Elton John in the Sun where he suggests, like so many others, that the internet is ruining everything. Both Mathew Ingram and Deep Jive Interests laughed off Sir Elton’s comments, with Ingram calling him a troll and Hung suggesting that he has no idea what he is talking about.

And while I generally agree that Elton’s comments are wrong, I think it’s far too easy for the technorati to dismiss the type of sentiment on display. The transition to Web 2.0 technologies is not akin to moving from tape to CD or from VHS to DVD. This is not merely an upgrade, but a fundamental, irreversible epistemological shift, matched only in significance by the rise of the printing press. As Sven Birkerts points out in The Gutenberg Elegies, what we are witnessing is the transition from a text-based culture to a screen-based culture. To simply dismiss people’s fears about this monumental change is, at best, callous and, at worst, simply elitist.

[Update]: Okay, I was kinda’, sorta’ defending Elton John, but this byline from the NY Times is the funniest things I’ve read all day: ‘Sir Elton says the Internet has destroyed music, deflecting blame from “Candle in the Wind.”‘