People are always into new stuff because there's a chance something new might be good. When something's "old" and you haven't heard about it, odds are it's because it isn't any good.
So people are deciding that the odds that something unknown could turn out to be good are better than the odds that something known could turn out to have been misjudged by their network of contacts and info sources.
I have not found this to be the case. A great many things are obscure because they don't appeal to a large audience. This does not make them inferior. Let's take music for example. The first Broken Social Scene album is superior to most of the albums that were released this week, but there is a good chance you haven't heard of it before. There are hundreds of great old books which you likely haven't read.
A secondary point to be made is that simply knowing of something doesn't mean that you know it. You are probably aware of at least a dozen old great books and haven't read them.
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People are always into new stuff because there's a chance something new might be good. When something's "old" and you haven't heard about it, odds are it's because it isn't any good.
So people are deciding that the odds that something unknown could turn out to be good are better than the odds that something known could turn out to have been misjudged by their network of contacts and info sources.
I have not found this to be the case. A great many things are obscure because they don't appeal to a large audience. This does not make them inferior. Let's take music for example. The first Broken Social Scene album is superior to most of the albums that were released this week, but there is a good chance you haven't heard of it before. There are hundreds of great old books which you likely haven't read.
A secondary point to be made is that simply knowing of something doesn't mean that you know it. You are probably aware of at least a dozen old great books and haven't read them.
Agreed. But this article is talking about the miserable masses of people out there, not the exceptions who go hunting for the absolute best stuff.
I see his point, but he's basically just lamenting human nature.