However, presentation in a medium is for expressing thoughts logic and ideas. Therefore, so long as these forms are communicated, the medium and the "amateur" has done his job with the same accomplishment as a professional. 
Posted on 06/30/2007 11:52:46 AM PDT by shrinkermd
Digital utopians have heralded the dawn of an era in which Web 2.0 — distinguished by a new generation of participatory sites like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, which emphasize user-generated content, social networking and interactive sharing — ushers in the democratization of the world: more information, more perspectives, more opinions, more everything, and most of it without filters or fees. Yet as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen points out in his provocative new book, “The Cult of the Amateur,” Web 2.0 has a dark side as well.
Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” In his view Web 2.0 is changing the cultural landscape and not for the better. By undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights, he says, it is creating a world in which 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.” This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If MySpace is a really big threat to the NY Times, they need help. MySpace is approximately 47 million pages of inane crap such as “Playa_Dog_69 says: Damn girl - Yo hot. hotter than Tila Tekila. Just dropping by to show some luv. Thank’s for being a friend.”
..."This book, which grew out of a controversial essay published last year by The Weekly Standard, is a shrewdly argued jeremiad against the digerati effort to dethrone cultural and political gatekeepers and replace experts with the “wisdom of the crowd.” Although Mr. Keen wanders off his subject in the later chapters of the book — to deliver some generic, moralistic rants against Internet evils like online gambling and online pornography — he writes with acuity and passion about the consequences of a world in which the lines between fact and opinion, informed expertise and amateurish speculation are willfully blurred..."
Music and literature are arts that will stand the test. News gathering may be another animal but people will pay for what they perceive as quality.
And freedom begets brilliance, invention, entertainment, and junk. Because everyone can inform everyone else of everything, we can all be information sifters rather than having the self-anointed do it for us. In the conservative world view, we feel all Americans (all people!) are smart enough to run their own lives and help those family members who are not able.
This elitist author is crying out, “Because you might get ripped off or bored, make sure you only shop at MY Snake Oil Shop!” Save the trees, dude; it’s already been written. Caveat emptor. No more need be said.
Free Republic is not a "Web 2.0" site. While the user inteface has been improved and refined over time, it is still essentially the original interface from about 10 years ago. This site was doing what it does long before the idiots in marketing departments dreamed up the term "Web 2.0". The user interface will never be confused with a desktop app. It is not flashy. It is functional and very much a remnant of the 1990's.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Will live to see? Seems like it has been so since messages were sent by yelling out the cave entrance.
However, presentation in a medium is for expressing thoughts logic and ideas. Therefore, so long as these forms are communicated, the medium and the "amateur" has done his job with the same accomplishment as a professional.
No, it isn’t.
We are not worthy! We are not worthy! We are not worthy!
They can't stand that ideas, opinions and yes, even news, is not in the hands of just a select few anymore. Sure some of it is BS but so is much of the MSM besides over the internet we get way more of the story then we have in over 200 years. They are losing their stranglehold and power and it scares the crap out of them. Many will being doing whatever they can to stop it.
“...when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule.”
He says “when blah meets blah meets blah” over and over and over. I want to smack him every time I read it.
Newsflash: the crowd hasn't embraced Britney Spears. She has some fans. Other people take a mild interest in what she's up to, but America never took Brit to its bosom.
And if the crowd embraced the tech boom of the 1990s was it necessarily "wrong" to do so? People may not have gotten off when they should have, but they recognized what was going on at the time.
As I understand it, the loonier theories about the end of the business cycle were rarely the work of ordinary men and women. They were concocted by the very sort of journalistic and academic gatekeepers that Keen favors.
I think the thesis is that over time majorities tend to get it right more often than wrong, and that holds up.
Of course, there is no divine right of crowds, but one can go broke underestimating the intelligence of the collective intelligence of the public.
Situations where a whole culture may be wrong about something are another matter altogether.
Priesthoods, experts, and intellectuals don't come out looking any better than ordinary people in such cases.
Here in New Brunswick, its so warm the igloos have almost all melted.
But you can bet that any time a room of monkeys starts typing, there will be typographical mistakes.
I meant to say "Of course, there is no divine right of crowds, but one can go broke underestimating the collective intelligence of the public."
TRANSLATION: "I went to the Columbia School of Journalism in 'conservative' New York city. Why should some fool with a camera and a nose for news make more money than me? I write in complete sentences, by Jove, and earned my effete snobbery the hard way!"
I don’t dislike Bill Kristol or Fred Barnes, but neither is a true conservative. They, like the President, are liberals with some conservative views. If the English language hadn’t been so badly mangled by the left, we would call them moderates — but we can’t.
As for Keen, he may or may not be of the same ilk as Barnes and Kristol, but he certainly is an elitist, which is almost as bad as being a flaming liberal.
I think it also irks them beyond belief to have we pajama-clad plebeians having more influence (and maybe more respectability) than those patricians who studied so hard for classes like “Womens studies” and “Activism in media”.
I believe despite all the wailing and gnashing-of-teeth they know, deep down, that their privileged positions are being undermined by that which they profess to admire - The common people - And it will take more than whining, deconstruction and trashy sentimentality to get them back the respect of those common people.
Yeah, we need to put a stop to that and go back to when the only news worth knowing came from the NY Times.
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