Buzzfeed editor-in-chief: 'Technology isn't a section in the newspaper any more - it's the culture'

Ben Smith speaks out on the massive economic and cultural transformation driven by digital


In a New York Times column musing on the state of the nation - the American nation of course - Maureen Dowd notes that young people "think of themselves as global citizens [and are] not interested in exalting America above all other countries."


In support of her argument she includes this quote by Ben Smith, theBuzzFeed editor-in-chief (once extolled in the paper as a boy wonder):


"The 23-year-olds I work with are a little over the conversation about how we were the superpower brought low. They think that's an 'older person conversation'.


They're more interested in this moment of crazy opportunity, with the massive economic and cultural transformation driven by Silicon Valley. And kids feel capable of seizing it. Technology isn't a section in the newspaper any more. It's the culture."


That 12-word final statement surely applies in Britain too (and arguably every country with an advanced economy:


"Technology isn't a section in the newspaper any more. It's the culture."


Taken to its logical conclusion that frontier-crossing culture therefore has the potential to unite people currently divided by "old" politics, does it not?