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Bringing Nothing to the Party
Bringing Nothing to the Party
True Confessions of a New Media Whore
The painfully true story of how Paul Carr attempted to become a dot com billionaire and in doing so lost his reputation, the love of his life and very nearly his freedom.
Book Excerpt
the arrival of Winamp, the first popular MP3-playing software, bringing high-quality, easy-to-download music to the web for the first time and allowing up-and-coming bands a way to distribute their music at zero cost. By huge coincidence, 1997 is also the year widespread Internet piracy was born. Go figure.
One by one, every other medium - radio, television, even full-length films - became digital, making them available to wider and wider audiences. The fact that no one was making any kind of money out of any of this was totally irrelevant. Media experts (most of whom were building start-ups of their own) were quick to point out that no one made money out of any new medium in the beginning anyway. The mantra was - to borrow from Field of Dreams - if we build it, they will pay... something... eventually.
We hope.
Please.*
Actually, saying that no one was making money from new media was slightly unfair: there was one group of media entrepreneurs that was making tons
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Maybe it's a glimpse into one of the dotcom societies. The alcoholized humor the author heaps on some of those types exhausts itself after a few dozen pages. What remains is trying to be a meaner crook than the neighbour, with constant refusal to learn anything useful. And the jealousy! He's constantly eating himself because he's out of the limelight. I personally prefer to advance humankind beyond such a pathetic stage.
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An interesting, light-hearted narrative of life in the world of the "dotcom" boom in London, albeit a narrative with serious consequences for global finance and peoples' lives. Well worth reading, with some very funny passages about people who control companies that every reader will have used.
Unfortunately, the footnotes don't work on the Sony LRF version.
Unfortunately, the footnotes don't work on the Sony LRF version.
02/28/2010
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FEATURED AUTHOR - 'The Plotting Shed' (see her blog http://www.intheplottingshed.com/) was Alex Martin's first writing space at the bottom of her Welsh garden. Now she splits her time between Wales and France and plot wherever she is. She still wanders aimlessly in the countryside with her dog and her dreams and she can still be found typing away with imaginary friends whispering in her ear, but these days she has the joy of seeing her stories published and the treasured feedback from readers who've enjoyed them.