Ben Greenman is the editor of the New Yorker. He’s written a new novel called Please Step Back, and he spoke with us about this dang 15 year old in the UK that the whole world is freaking out about.
Why? The kid wrote that “the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are pirate copies and no one uses Twitter.” Oh crap oh crap oh crap. I don’t know what’s more striking about this kid’s “report” — that people are actually surprised by what he said or that we’re listening to him because he claimed to have surveyed some 300 peers…via cell phone.
Other poignant notes: his friends talk via game consoles, hate advertisements (except viral ones, those are OK), two weeks was enough time for him to fully understand what banks do but banks have no idea what kids do.
Then, BusinessWeek, the well-respected original Depression-born weekly magazine, was recently valued at maybe $1. What does that mean? That advertising in BW isn’t worth jack. Bummer.
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