The cult of the Amateur
Never one to shy away from controversy, Andrew Keen’s new book “The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy” comes out in a couple of days, and he is ticked.
Keen criticises Web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia for making it impossible to discern the important from the trivial. ‘Wikipedia is going to become the internet,’ he said. ‘It does away with the distinction between the distinguished and the ordinary and becomes a bizarre compendium of information. The absence of editors means there’s no way of determining whether something is important, so you get a longer entry for Pamela Anderson than Emmeline Pankhurst. I want to learn about Martin Luther’s epiphany, not the epiphany of the 11-year-old who blogs next door. Source: The Guardian UK
Not that there is anything wrong with anything, but no Wikipedia is not an academically approved source of information, nor is much of what is on the internet anymore. Although it makes for a great search, much of what is on the web is sports, porn, or beer, and we do shadow that within the confines of what we think is neat. And we think that sports, porn and beer are neat. They are multi-billion dollar industries, and people who like them are going to blog about them.
Most blogs after a while are abandoned and turned into splogs, the distinction between payperpost or just freely writing about what you want to write about is blurred. We are the corporate voice, because we are talking about the corporations that perfect sports, porn and beer. Its all part of the collective consciousness that we are calling the internet.
User generated content has its risks; we accept those risks as we continue along with using user generated content. No sense in turning your back on it, it is here to stay, and like with all freedoms, the lowest common denominator applies, the point of that is, raise the lowest common denominator to something useful, or just accept sports, porn, and beer. No worries, SPB (Sports Porn and Beer) has its own rewards.
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