[lionhearted]

This one, too -

--

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.” [Wired, February 1996]

[mattgreenrocks]

That quote kills me.

I've always had an aesthetic revulsion to committing to giving people exactly what they say they want. It belies a lack of imagination on the part of the creator, and smacks of a lack of integrity. However, most of the world is set up this way, despite my status as a 'professional.'

How do you claim more autonomy? I suppose this is part of the beauty of a startup.

[RyanMcGreal]

In fact, the networks are in business to give their customers - the advertisers - what they want. Granted, what advertisers want is to reach eyeballs (though not all eyeballs are created equal) - but it's still optimization-by-proxy, and it still produces a distortion between what people want from TV and what they're willing to tolerate.

[wslh]

Very Huxleian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

[cyrus_]

Steve Jobs of all people should realize the value of choosing not to give the viewers exactly what they want and instead pushing them toward a higher standard, even if it costs a bit of money in the short run.

[jbooth]

That quote's crap.

We used to have Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. Now we have CNN and Fox News. Can you picture anyone from either of those networks calling out McCarthy?

It's not so much an active conspiracy of mendacious bootlickers, as it is the lack of a conspiracy to strive for something better. Steve Jobs of all people should know better.