Technology And The Decline of Gonzo Journalism

johnny maelstrom writes "Pitchfork has an article on how being unable to write about technology has dumbed-down the media. It's quite interesting to see that the formulaic writings in the technology media and the assumption that we don't all get it has lead to a stagnant media. They call for the next Bangs or Thompson and a revival of Gonzo. From the article: 'They [the audience] want a tastemaker, a voice of authority, who can put it all in perspective and knock our heads together with his or her crazy-yet-dead-on arguments. But I think I've found the answer: We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.'"

that would be cool

[__aahlyu4518]

"They call for the next Bangs or Thompson and a revival of Gonzo."

I just love the muppets !!! ;-)

Bloggers

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about all those bloggers... They all have a brilliant grasp of technology, incisive and cutting wit, literate and cultured writing and devastating sex appeal. Surely one of them will step up to the plate and deliver the technology journalism we all dream of, just like they did with political discourse.

Interesting Idea....

[Maelwryth]

But I don't think he's qualified to talk about it and, personally, I'm not qualified to comment on it.

Re:What about John C. Dvorak?

[dr_dank]

I consider him "gonzo."

Since Dvorak evidently whiffs large amounts of raw ether before typing his column, I'd say the comparison is valid.

We already have a Bangs and a Thompson

[sgant]

We have John C. Dvorak.

Bangs, Thompson, O'Rourke, and now Dvorak.

There you go...no need to read any further, our borders are safe. Carry on.

Re:Ignorance = cool

[gEvil (beta)]

Cashier: Do you wanna have fries with this?
Me: OK, sir.

I don't see your problem with that... : p

Re:Ignorance = cool

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that saying: "Arguing on the Internet is like competing at the Special Olympics? Even if you win, you're still a retard."?

Well, I'm reminded of that for some reason. Even if you're the guy on the good side of the counter, you're still eating at McDonalds.

Re:that would be cool

[identity0]

I am trying to wrap my head around the concept of tech journalism, Hunter Thompson, and the muppets coming together...

"We were somewhere around Redmond, on the edge of Microsoft campus, when the drugs began to take hold...

I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit light headed, maybe you should drive..." when all of a sudden, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge popups, all swooping and screeching about vi4gr4 all around us. "Holy Kermit!" I shouted. "What are those goddamn animals?!?!"

"What the hell are you yelling about?" My attourney, who was pouring orange juice on his chest, to facilitate the tanning process, disclaimed. No point in warning him, I thought. He'll see those bastards eventually, the poor doomed bastard.

"As your attorney, I advise you to run Firefox with the Adblock extention and put another rock of crack in your pipe. Wakka wakka wakka!!" Damn it, I thought. So that's why that rat-bastard Fozzie Bear was so calm.

My consternation was broken once again when what appeared to be a large ergonomic office chair smashed the windshield of the convertible, a red '69 Cadillac from the rental agency. The chair bounced up, over our heads, and gracefully landed, somehow, on its wheels. My following of the chair's flight through the air with my neck nearly caused me to run into the most frightening thing I have ever seen. It may have been a monkey, or an ape, or some other type of beast, but possibly it was an executive from Microsoft. Whatever it was, it was huge, thick, and with a glare and ferocious face the like of which I had never seen. With a baboon-like intensity he was shrieking, "FUCKING GONZO!!! I'LL FUCKING KILLLLLLLL THEEEEEEEEEEEMMM!!!! DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELO..." and then it began what appeared to be a seizure, uttering gibberish at the highest possible volume like an air-raid siren and foaming at the mouth.

"As your attorney, I advise you to run that bitch over and never look back - Wokka wokka wokka!!"

That's right, I thought. Listen to the bear.

May the spirits of Jim Henson and Hunter Thompson forgive me :)

Re:More like we don't know how to read tech...

[ajs318]

So. I've been a penguin-shagger since before XP came out. Who better than me to test-drive the new Windows? I set off down to the local dealer to get me some supplies. Half an ounce of solid, a big bag of weed. A strip of acid tabs. A gramme of Charlie and another couple of grammes of speed. And to top it all off, a couple of grammes of Gear and a dozen valium. When I heard Kate was coming too I was worried that we might not have enough, so I asked her to bring her own stash. I also bought some more weed, ten tabs of E and some more gear. Next stop the 24 hour Tesco, for some aluminium foil and Ribena. The booze section was still open so I picked up a couple of litres of vodka. Last of all I called at the tobacconist's at the end of my street for king-size Rizla papers.

First stop was CD time. The Microsoft operating system comes on an even-shinier-than-a-normal-CD CD. I shoved the disc into the drive and skinned up a quick bifter while waiting for my assistant. I mounted it and had a look at the files. Nothing special. I made an ISO. No copy protection. Well, that was handy. I sparked up the dube, then shut down the PC and stripped out its hard drive.

For a job like this I figured I had better have a decent workstation, so I'd ordered an Athlon 64 4000+, with a top-of-the-range nVidia {at least there are some i-tal drivers for nVidia cards, even if they are slow; beside which, I had plenty of cycles to spare}, two gigabit ethernet ports, serial ATA, old-fashioned parallel ATA and 8 USB ports. A case positively studded with blue diodes and enough fans to change the air in a two-bed semi in an hour. CD-RW and DVD+RW drives. Plenty of DVD+RW discs, that also worked in the TV recorder I had never sent back. A no-nonsense two-channel sound card {no point having more speakers than I have ears} plumbed through several amp and speaker combos. My trusty bipolar NAD 3120 feeding homemade speakers, a Japanese MOSFET amp working into Tannoy Mercurys, and a valve amp I had had rebuilt by a firm in Cambridge, with a response flatter than a witch's tit from DC to long wave radio into some ex-BBC studio monitors. I had a 480mm flat panel LCD, 1600x1200 pixels and not a single dead one among them. All this, you must understand, was absolutely necessary for testing the system. I had already customised Debian the way I wanted it on that machine. Now I was about to abandon the operating system I knew and loved for this Windows thing.

Kate burst through the door as I was fitting the new hard drive onto which I would install Windows. She was giggling uncontrollably. I hoped she hadn't Made A Scene. These were early days. I had the review to write, and I needed Kate to stay sane so she could keep me sane. I screwed the drive in place and attached the SATA and power cables. Then I powered the machine up.

"What's it doing now?" asked Kate.
"Booting."
"Sounds like a good idea." Kate reached for the aluminium foil. "I brought us some Naughty!"
"And I brought us some Nice."

So we had a boot of the heroin and a couple more spliffs while Windows started installing, and between tokes I configured another Linux box with two network cards as a highly-restrictive firewall. I thought we could log every packet going in or out of the Windows box just to see what it was sending where.