internet culture: is it a cancer upon society, or the seed of great new things to come?

Christ, who knows? It's probably both.
I really like the idea of the internet making the media a more egalitarian thing. People can choose more easily what they want to listen to and watch, rendering the whole industrial model of the media almost obsolete. If people are abandoning the radio, how can the music industry saturate mainstream culture with the bands they want us to obsess over? This is theoretically a really good thing: turning an art form into an industry usually just undermines the art form itself, and once the industry isn't quite as necessary for distribution, then it probably ought to be done away with altogether. Obviously digital music has its problems, quality-wise, and there are some bands--see the Jesus Lizard, below, or even the Beatles, whose discography has yet to be released on well-mastered CDs--that sound worse on CD than on vinyl. That shouldn't be anything that advances in technology can't eventually handle, though, should it? I still buy music in solid formats rather than digital because it straight-up sounds better, and, yeah, I like having the album art and liner notes to look at while I'm listening to music. That might make me a reactionary in this day and age, but we're all entitled to our self-contradictions, and the technology's a long way from being fully-realized (and yes, I'm one of those people who are worried about the Loudness Wars, despite not having nearly good enough speakers or headphones for it to affect me very much).

Also, have you seen Myspace or Youtube lately? I'm sure you have, but holy mother of Crom those places are depressing. Go check out the comments on Youtube or IMDB if you want to get really, really angry. Maybe if we eliminated the industry, Dane Cook and "Chocolate Rain" actually would come out on top. Hopefully we're just in a dark period before the whole system gets an overhaul, but it's entirely within the realm of possibility that this is what progress amounts to: a state of media anarchy where no source of information is credible and Lord Humungus's marauders from The Road Warrior are the closest thing we've got to pop stars.
That would suck, of course, but at least there would be no more Hannah fucking Montana.