Best Read:Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Paul is dead

I see people playing rockband with an intensity that could split a hair in half and I weep. When (I believe it was an MIT lab) created rockband they thought they were bringing music to the masses, what they brought was another way to to fool ourselves that we are doing “something” while the world beckons to be changed. I love technology , but I sometimes act like a Luddite, Its simple,  I see people playing rockband and the like , what 1-3 hours a day, time better spent on learning an instrument or the like.

Given that our culture is fundamentally consumerist, every countercultural movement is by definition anti-consumerist, a quixotic attempt to create an imaginary space that exists outside of and in opposition to the marketplace. Counterculturalism is a doomed attempt to maintain innocence in the face of the market’s all-consuming cynicism. Once the Beatles, and particularly John Lennon, became aware of their power, they dedicated themselves to sustaining the countercultural dream of the sixties, even after the dream had evaporated. Rock Band in general, though especially the Beatles edition, makes a particularly good vampire. The blood it sucks is the blood of the innocent.
via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Paul is dead.