Science & Tech Quote by Roger Ebert

Ebert isn’t praising the internet as some utopian library; he’s praising it as a pressure-release valve. Coming from a critic who spent decades inside the high-gatekeeping ecosystem of newspapers, TV, and studio access, the key phrase is “opportunity to self publish.” That’s not just a technical change. It’s a redistribution of cultural power. When anyone can post a review, the authority of the professional critic stops being enforced by scarcity (limited column inches, a handful of national outlets) and has to be earned in public.

The subtext is quietly insurgent: film criticism thrives when it’s plural, argumentative, and a little unruly. “Sites that are friendly” is doing a lot of work here. Ebert’s acknowledging that mainstream venues often define “serious criticism” by taste, tone, and social fit as much as by insight. The internet doesn’t simply widen the audience; it widens the acceptable kinds of voices, backgrounds, and obsessions. A critic can be hyper-specific, wildly nerdy, politically pointed, or formally experimental and still find their people.

Context matters: Ebert embraced the web early, especially as illness limited his ability to speak. He understood the internet as prosthetic and amplifier, a way to keep the conversation going when old platforms shut doors. There’s optimism here, but it’s pragmatic optimism: criticism gets better when it’s less dependent on institutional permission and more dependent on connection, clarity, and the stubborn desire to argue about movies in public.