Anti-Climacus

It's always nice to see someone else making points that I've made myself, and in more persuasive forms:

The problem isn't that the internet is too distracting to make work impossible, it's a matter of self-control. If you can't manage that, the problem's not the internet, the problem is you.

Similarly, the complaint that most of the internet is no good makes no sense, for the same reason it makes no sense to complain that, say, a musician does not consistently produce excellent work: most everything everyone produces is mediocre. If someone happens to buck that trend for a short period of time--in my field, Michael Walzer is the example of someone who produces a lot of excellent work over an extended period of time (but also a lot of less-exceptional work before and after that run), but think the Rolling Stones or R.E.M. in their heyday if that example works better, or Woody Allen in the 70s--that's a career-making run in almost any field. The point of all of which is that comparisons need to be apples-to-apples: one can't fairly compare a good novel to a bad blog and find the latter lacking.