The Cult of the Amateur

Whilst ordering a recommended book for my MA, The Rough Guide to Blogging, on Amazon this morning, I noticed that “Customers who bought this item also bought…”, amongst other things, Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cult-Amateur-Internet-Killing-Assaulting/dp/1857883934/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_2). Interesting, especially as I’d only really become consciously aware of Andrew Keen for the first time yesterday via his column for The Independent. Perhaps I should follow this up, especially as I’m now, I suppose, in danger of becoming a member of this cult myself!

To embrace or fight Web 2.0?

With yesterday’s almost entirely positive introduction to Web 2.0 at the course’s first residential still ringing in my ears, I was reminded today that not everyone is so enthusiastic about these apparently unstoppable developments in the world of digital communications.

I finally got round to reading The Independent’s ”New Media” section from last Monday, 21 April, in which Andrew Keen writes about having just read two new books “which come to absurdly different conclusions about the identical Web 2.0 revolution.” 

One book, Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everyone: The power of Organizing Without Organizations (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Here-Comes-Everybody-Organizing-Organizations/dp/0713999896/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209338697&sr=1-1), apparently argues that “the internet’s three Cs: collaboration, conversation and community are magically transporting us to the digital promised land…The more we chatter with one another online, the more we will replace unnatural social hierarchy with the all-too-human democracy of self-organising communities.”

In contrast, Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0385522657/sr=1-1/qid=1209338852/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1209338852&sr=1-1&seller=), argues that “the only way to maintain one’s dignity in the internet age of ubiquitous self-authored content is by maintaining one’s silence…In the age of the electronic mob, we resist by saying nothing.”

I suspect, as Andrew Keen does, that digital communications are “neither quite as good nor quite as evil as (the above mentioned authors) imagine.” However, I intend to bear these contrasting points of view in mind as I pursue my own exploration of Web 2.0 further.

Hello world!

Welcome to my first ever blog, begun as part of an MA module entitled Internet Cultures at the Institute of Education in London. Over the next few weeks I’ll be “musing” on issues to do with what’s come to be called Web 2.0. But what exactly is that? Here’s one answer.