I also wonder if seeing too much contemporary work is problematic. I once had an assistant, Phillip Carpenter, who said something I’ll never forget. Phil started off as a musician in Nashville. He was surrounded by a ton of talent and learned about everything going on. But this knowledge, he said, was eventually damaging. Phil explained that the best musicians often come from nowhere. They are in their parent’s basement in Idaho, don’t really know how to hold the guitar, and consequently develop their own peculiar sound.
So here is the question: If limitation spawns creativity, is the limitless resource of the Internet a good thing? Does it do more harm than good to read all these blogs?