I just came across this article in the LA Times from Novemember. I’m glad I didn’t see it until now because I’ve been thinking lately about how the Information Age is providing more than a way for me to access information from everywhere around the world at any time. It’s providing a way for me to define myself as an individual. I can connect to my niche interests and niche communities that were previously out of my reach. It’s showing me new possibilities and inspiring me to believe.

This article I read is not just continuing to beat the drum of Hollywood’s doom, but it’s an insightful piece about how we’re not just distracted from going the theater by technology, but the creativity eminating from technology inspires me believe in possibilities. Most movies at the multiplex just make me feel numb and dumb after 2 hours.

As it stands, Hollywood has become a prisoner of a corporate mindset that is squeezing the entrepreneurial vitality out of the system. It’s not just that studios are making bad movies - they’ve been doing that for years. They’ve lost touch with any real cultural creativity. When you walk down the corridors at Apple or a video game company, there’s an electricity in the air that encourages people into believing they could dream up a new idea that could blow somebody’s mind.

At the big studios, the creative voltage is sometimes so low that you wonder if you’ve wandered into an insurance office. The dreamers have left the building. Back in the 1950s, David Selznick, out walking one night with Ben Hecht, glumly said, "Hollywood’s like Egypt, full of crumbling pyramids. It’ll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands." As I said, show people like to exaggerate, but these days when I go around Hollywood, I can see the crumbling pyramids too.

From Patrick Goldstein’s article In a losing race with the zeitgeist