The Cult of the Amateur
On my way out to California, I wrapped up The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. It’s essentially a book of doom and gloom about the impact Web 2.0 is having on our culture. It’s helpful for me, though, to read perspectives I don’t totally agree with from time to time. Here are some of Keen’s thoughts on the subject:
- "Blogging has become such a mania that a new blog is being created every second of every minute of every hour of every day."
- "The blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music, and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites ‘aggregate.’"
- "It’s a dangerous form of digital narcissism; the only conversations we want to hear are those with ourselves and those like us."
- "Fake identities on the Internet have, in fact, become so widely adopted, they’ve been given their own term: ‘sock puppet,’ meaning the alter ego through which one speaks on an online community or posts on a blog."
- "Forty songs are actually downloaded for every legal music download."
- "In any profession, when there is no monetary incentive or reward, creative work stalls."
- "Our entire cultural economy is in dire straits. I fear we will live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising."
I bet this guy is a riot at parties. A real room-brightener-up-er.
Every form of media or communication is ripe with opportunity for overuse, misuse, abuse, and plain ol’ self serving profiteering. Print, radio, television, and motion pictures are all mediums that have periodically been contorted in these ways. And whole segments of each of these mediums are now devoted solely to these faults.
But these same tools have also added to societal progress and the quality of life in many more instances than those which could be considered a hinderance to our lives.
Never has a tool or process been added to society which does not have the capability to be used in a manner that causes more harm than good. The frequency or magnitude with which change, be it tools, processes, ideas, etc., creates greater detriment than enhancement, almost always results from human behavior/flaws.
If society chooses to approach all advancement or development with the “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” mentality, then Mr. Keen may be raising a legitimate red flag.
But despite the inevitable abuses Mr. Keen identifies, the potential for enhancing the technological benefits, to the vast majority who will properly utilize Web 2.0 and future developments, negates the risks of adding this tool to our work bench.
Chip Schneider
Checkout presentationzen.com and specifically the entry “Larry Lessig presents at TED: Nails it”. Mr Lessig provides a thoughtful and intelligent counterpoint to Mr Keen’s perspective.