Quote: "In the future, everybody will be anonymous for 15 minutes."

During a recent interview with Personal Branding magazine, the writer asked me what I thought about this amusing quote, which is the inverse of Andy Wharhol's more famous one. I am not so sure. The world is filled with extroverts and introverts so maybe there's a balance somewhere. Your view? (I find it ironic by the way that this tweeter uses Obama on a stage as his Twitter background.)

Comments

[Mike Russell]

I prefer David Weinberger's "In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 people." That is, until the next :// Crispin Porter + Bogusky-created Burger King promo, when 10 of the 15 get summarily un-friended in exchange for a Whopper.

[Corvida Raven]

I disagree. That's placing entirely too much hype on social media, technology, and the web at large. People are still using the most random screen names and I personally but up plenty of privacy blocks against my own identity when I can. The world at large will still be very much anonymous to most if not all of us.

[wayan_vota]

I get this quote perfectly: In the future, you will only be anonymous for 15 minutes at most. The reminder, you will be on online somehow (Twitter, Flickr, YouTube & whatever replaces them). We will all be too easy to find to be anonymous.

[AriMelber]

And even if it's only 15 people, per Weinberger, it's still not anonymous. But people who live in smaller towns and regions never had anonymity to begin with. I suspect social media's impact is larger here depending on where you live.Also, I love that Obama photo (for my twitter background) cause the audience is featured so prominently!

[Michael Sippey]

I prefer this from Joanne at Tomorrow Museum: "In the future, a famous person will die every fifteen minutes."

[Fred Schlegel]

If everybody is famous then nobody is. If all our lives are on the web, then there will still need to be a spark that drives you to the top of the collective consciousness.

[Eva]

No matter what you prefer - its funny!

[eva]

it actually is a quote from the lyrics of a robbie williams-song!

[siliconia]

The quote is from recent Banksy's interview: "I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes."http://swindlemagazine.com/issue08/banksy/

[erik]

No, that quote's from Robbie Williams - http://bit.ly/zE77w (3:23)

[marlaynking]

The new vogue anonymity?

[Micah Wittman]

siliconia and erik, and anyone else who may take an interest: I've written up a full blog post on the question of the origin of the "anonymous for 15 minutes" quote http://wittman.posterous.com/quotation-back-trace

[siliconia]

@micah - great, tnx! (unfortunately I can not comment on your site :S )

[Micah Wittman]

siliconia, thanks! I just turned 'Anyone Can Comment' over there http://wittman.posterous.com/quotation-back-trace :)