Today, Allen Ginsberg would have turned 85 if he was still alive. I have much admiration for Ginsberg, due mostly to the way he lived his life. Never giving up what he believed to be right and never selling out. Died in 1997, I wonder what Ginsberg would be doing if he were still alive. Would he be on Twitter? How would have this old Beat Poet functioned in the digital world? I wonder how it would have suited him.
Web 2.0 has become the double-edged sword for people of genuine talent, real artists, and actual rebels like Ginsberg, Dylan, Patty Smith, and Hemingway. New models of these types are out there somewhere, but will they be able to keep their heads above the stream of information that is over saturating the World Wide Web? Will it not be harder, if not impossible, to find the needle in this dull haystack of phonies, posers, and hacks? Like this blog, everyone has the opportunity to have a voice now. But is everyone’s voice worth your time, or are they just contributing to the bottleneck caused by an over abundance of digital trash?
Fortunately, situations similar to this one have historically resulted in an uprising of sorts (i.e. the Beat Generation, the Punk Revolution). Maybe the next generation of talent will also find a way to swim through the sea of schmucks, catch a wave, and ride it into shore. And then blow our minds like "Howl" did mine.
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