The Cult of the Amateur

“One inviolable tenet of this twin-track libertarian ethos, according to Keen, is a misplaced faith in the integrity of the amateur – the citizen journalist, the self-published author, the mash-up musician – and a generic distrust of expertise.” SMH

1. I’ve never heard of Andrew Keen, nor do I know very much about him, but he has recently written a book called “The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy”. The above quote was from an SMH article discussing the various points and pitfalls of his argument. It’s a long article, but I think that quote sums up Keen’s main argument, and it’s one that I agree with, though probably not as much as he does. Some people seem to place an awful lot of trust in something that was written in an authoritative voice on a semi-popular blog, or on Wikipedia, which to me seems quite bizarre since you have no idea who that person really is. Anyway, read the article and make up your own mind.

Comments

  1. But why trust the people who wrote Encyclopedia Britannica? Why, just because they cost a pile of money and come in printed form, do people want to trust them more – perhaps to feel better about their investment?

    I say trust NO ONE, use everything you ever read as a SECONDARY source (remember History class? No, not the glue sticks or the porn, but what we supposedly learnt!), and it’s not true by default unless you see it with your OWN eyes (PRIMARY source).

    This applies for photos, video, audio recordings, you name it.

    Comment by Tim — August 7, 2007 @ 6:55 pm

  2. Why should you trust the Britannica more than Wikipedia? Well, for one, the Britannica is edited by experts and professionals, rather than people who think they are experts and professionals. I remember reading a study that puts the number of factual errors in the Britannica and Wikipedia as roughly equal, but it didn’t say the type of factual error, the severity of the factual error, nor any insight as to why there was an error. If I was a betting man I’d say the Britannica held more out-of-date material, and the Wikipedia held more info that was widely believed but inaccurate. Which one is worse? I can’t really say.

    And I disagree with you about the primary source — I don’t believe that everything I see can be trusted, because I don’t have the necessary skill to interpret the material. If I read an article in the New York Times about politically motivated violence in Zimbabwe, I am much more inclined to believe that, even if I did see it for myself, because the writer of the piece is likely to be better versed in the region, and the NYT has an army of people whose job is to fact-check articles before they go to print.

    The main difference between Wikipedia et al and the traditional media companies and information providers is that the traditional sources have a proven track record. Some are more trustworthy than others, the record sets that straight. If the Britannica publishes defamatory statements about someone (which has happened many times in Wikipedia) they’ll get sued, and that is their motivation to make sure no mistakes are made. The same safeguards don’t exist in Wikipedia, people are free to say what they want and know they can get away with it, re: the Penny Arcade Fuckwad Theory: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19. And it is because no one pays for it that gets Wikipedia in trouble. Each user gets nothing but a voice, and each person wants to make sure his voice is heard, and that’s when you get ill-informed but persistent dickwads chasing away people who actually know something about the topic. Ain’t democracy grand?

    I should mention though that I’m not against Wikipedia, I quite like it as a source of arcane and random information about obscure topics — small J-Pop bands, old cameras and the like. It’s a fun place to start researching too, since it links out to lots of different sources. I think Wikipedia is far more interesting as the modern interpretation of the Web Directory of old than an actual encyclopedia. And I’ve focused a lot on Wikip rather than all the rest of the blogs and such that fall into the same scenario. My point remains the same, while I applaud the democratisation of speech through the internet, I believe the voice of proven experts should ring louder than those yet to be proven.

    Comment by JohnK — August 13, 2007 @ 12:52 am

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