In honor of my dear friend Richard Metzger's stint as a BB guestblogger beginning today, I dug up this link to a Wired interview I did with Richard that was published exactly 10 years ago this month. Wow, time sure flies when we're having fun. From the interview, titled "Live From Bedlam":
Wired: Information wants to be free, but does it want to be true?
Metzger: All information is from questionable sources. In the marketplace of ideas, what value does falsehood have once it's exposed?…So what's behind the growing public fixation on the fringe?
Ten years ago all of this would have been so marginal. As we become more technologically advanced, we move further away from anything real, any real ecstatic religious experiences or gnosis. People are freaking out because they see Jerry Springer's white-trash crack whores on TV and schoolkids ambushing classmates with Uzis. How much more fucked up can things get? It's apocalypse from now on. People realize that the line they've been sold, the American Dream, is over – they want, if not an explanation, then at least someone to blame…Can the "underground" survive in an age when it's co-opted almost instantly?
The best thing that could possibly happen to the underground is that it becomes overground – to see kids picking up Noam Chomsky and hearing Jello Biafra instead of just Stephen King and Weezer.
Richard Metzger: Live From Bedlam
