Quote

I think the 24-hour news cycle has helped exaggerate the differences between the parties. You can always find someone on TV somewhere carping about something. That didn't happen 20 years ago.

We first started to rent old VFW halls in Philly or whatever; we rented kegs and did parties and played our own music. We had to find a way to do it because nobody else was helping us, and I think now it's important to keep those dialogues happening, those parties happening.

In this age of media and Internet access, we are much more talkative than ever before.

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

In '77 there was no Internet, there was no Twitter or Facebook, and I think that, without being some old git who hates anything new, people's attention spans are too short. Back then you had 'Top Of The Pops' and 'Melody Maker,' and you had to make the effort to go to a show so that you absorbed the culture of music.

From early on... we really looked at the Internet as a whole new way to provide storytelling and entertainment.

My father found cocktail parties challenging.

Contrary to the utopian rhetoric of social media enthusiasts, the Internet often makes the jump from deliberation to participation even more difficult, thwarting collective action under the heavy pressure of never-ending internal debate.

The world of TV debates is antiquated. What looked smart and modern in 1960, with Kennedy versus Nixon, looks quaint and over-rehearsed between Obama and Romney. We need a new format; even if we have the same moderators and candidates, there needs to be a more nuanced way for audiences to connect with and shape presidential debates.

That is very different from how it used to be in the 20th century. Media was very one way. There's a small little industry. It broadcasted its message and everyone else in the world just had to listen. Now the internet is allowing what used to be a monologue to become a dialogue. I think that's healthy and actually restoring a more natural way.