Art, Entertainment, Entropy response

The argument made in the “Art, Entertainment, Entropy” article can be distilled to the idea that, unlike true art, entertainment adds nothing new to the system. Instead, entertainment uses repetitive feedback of accepted tropes to captivate the audience- and in doing so it inhibits creative thinking by producing a glut of useless information.

At first blush, it might seem that modern media offers a way to circumvent much of the destruction of creativity predicted by the article’s author. After all, with easy ways for a normal person to access widespread media- through things like blogs- it seems natural for new and creative ideas to spring forth from the suddenly tremendous number of contributors, yes? Well, experience seems to dictate otherwise. While the very first few ventures into blogs and other personal pages may have been an interesting exercise in exploring an individual’s private life and thoughts in a public forum beyond what has been previously seen, the millions of offshoots created as more and more people join in offer nothing new to the table. Minor details may vary from one person’s twitter to another’s, the real information being gained is miniscule, as nothing truly new is done. In this way, the proliferation of these new media tools- and the resulting outpour of absolutely staggering amounts of (useless) information- is hastening the increase in entropy described by the article’s author at a rate that (s)he most likely never thought possible.