The Cult of the Amateur 2007 by Andrew Keen
This book reminds me of a quote from one of my favorite movies, Tombstone.
"It seems my hypocrisy knows no bounds."
The great failing of Andrew Keen in this book (maybe anytime else) is that Keen assumes that people are chained to their laptops and forced to watch user created content. His whole premise of the book is that Web 2.0, the next generation of interaction among users on the interwebs, is the global warming of culture. Man has gotten to the point where they have slowly, or rapidly if you side with Keen, begun to dismantle the hierarchy of culture: where have the cultural gatekeepers gone?
Wikipedia allows a 12th grader to have the same anonymous credential as a PhD biologist on the topic of giraffes. Anyone with a camera and an internet connection can entertain/dupe a bunch of people with a lonely girl and a web cam.
What Keen fails to assert in any argument before his last short chapter of "solutions," is that the keeper of culture is the person who chooses to engage it. I have to chose to look at anything I click on YouTube. I have to choose to chat or make friends on "my"space. If anything the failing of Keen's history on the dementia of Web 2.0, is it falls on educators, specifically and by my own bias the English Majors of America, to teach critical thinking. You don't have to be a professional critic to determine the value of a work, let alone whether or not it's credible.
Art is made by artists. Criticism is made by critics. But that street is one hand washing the other. Now Mr. Keen might say that I'm mixing metaphors. I say that I know I'm mixing metaphors and choose to despite the fact that might be looked upon by Keen as "amateurish." Is it amateurish when I'm credentialled by the state of Montana?
The other topic that Keen fails to address is that for an artist like me user created content is free marketing for me. If people choose to watch what I choose to post, they may at some point choose to pay me for the content they choose to look at. Yes Keen, I ended that sentence with a preposition because I know that if you take a latin lexicon and mix it with a German syntax, then yes, you can end a sentence with a preposition just like in German.
So if you want to get pompous I can be just as pompous as someone who looks like this:
Then yes I can be just as pompous.
My apologies to Mr. Keen, because as I type my drunk aunt is telling me how great and quirky my humor is. I wish I could have spent more time on it without distraction.
"It seems my hypocrisy knows no bounds."
The great failing of Andrew Keen in this book (maybe anytime else) is that Keen assumes that people are chained to their laptops and forced to watch user created content. His whole premise of the book is that Web 2.0, the next generation of interaction among users on the interwebs, is the global warming of culture. Man has gotten to the point where they have slowly, or rapidly if you side with Keen, begun to dismantle the hierarchy of culture: where have the cultural gatekeepers gone?
Wikipedia allows a 12th grader to have the same anonymous credential as a PhD biologist on the topic of giraffes. Anyone with a camera and an internet connection can entertain/dupe a bunch of people with a lonely girl and a web cam.
What Keen fails to assert in any argument before his last short chapter of "solutions," is that the keeper of culture is the person who chooses to engage it. I have to chose to look at anything I click on YouTube. I have to choose to chat or make friends on "my"space. If anything the failing of Keen's history on the dementia of Web 2.0, is it falls on educators, specifically and by my own bias the English Majors of America, to teach critical thinking. You don't have to be a professional critic to determine the value of a work, let alone whether or not it's credible.
Art is made by artists. Criticism is made by critics. But that street is one hand washing the other. Now Mr. Keen might say that I'm mixing metaphors. I say that I know I'm mixing metaphors and choose to despite the fact that might be looked upon by Keen as "amateurish." Is it amateurish when I'm credentialled by the state of Montana?
The other topic that Keen fails to address is that for an artist like me user created content is free marketing for me. If people choose to watch what I choose to post, they may at some point choose to pay me for the content they choose to look at. Yes Keen, I ended that sentence with a preposition because I know that if you take a latin lexicon and mix it with a German syntax, then yes, you can end a sentence with a preposition just like in German.
So if you want to get pompous I can be just as pompous as someone who looks like this:
Then yes I can be just as pompous.
My apologies to Mr. Keen, because as I type my drunk aunt is telling me how great and quirky my humor is. I wish I could have spent more time on it without distraction.
posted by RB @ 11:41 PM
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