Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, is the poster boy for Web 2.0 resistance and arguably the most hated man in the blogosphere. In his book, Andrew quite stubbornly positions himself and his ideas as anti-Web 2.0, a culture in which he says user-generated content is undermining credible and high-quality content. Why is he claiming that Web 2.0 is pushing us back into the Dark Ages? He happens to be a former client of mine, so I feel I can provide a bit of unique insight into his personality, concerns, and ideas.
First, I admit I haven't read Andrew's book, but I've read enough news reports and heard him talk about it enough to know where he's coming from. In his view, Web 2.0 threatens the existence of the mass media "ecosystem" and relegates culture to the domain of amateurs. He contends that high-quality content needs to be mediated by professional gatekeepers -- such as editors, fact checkers, and publishers. That's a gross over-simplification, of course, but if you want to find out more, you can Google him or buy his book.
Back in 1997, my wife, Margaret, did some design work for Andrew Keen. At the time, he sold his house in San Francisco to fund his Website about music and high-end audio equipment. Before starting his Website, Andrew had worked as a university professor, a music and cinema critic, and a journalist. He had connections in the hi-fi industry and was able to convince some of them to advertise on his site.
Andrew was similar to a lot of people we met at that time. He was convinced that building a great content-oriented Website would make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. He was somewhat different from the other dot-com dreamers we worked with in that he actually kept his site running for several years -- and he was willing to pay us in real money (although not a lot, admittedly).
Andrew was very persistent and very particular. He expected print-quality graphics and broadcast-quality animation on his Website and wouldn't settle for less. Margaret designed some banner ads for him, and she did a great job of translating pie-in-the-sky visions into 30K animated gifs. Eventually, Margaret would manage to produce something that was up to his standards and he'd be very enthusiastic. We still joke about his "Margaret, I like it!" phone calls.
At that time, however, if we had the Web publishing technologies that are available today, it would have been much easier for us to produce the effects he wanted. But his persistence resulted in a better product.
The big problem he seems to have with Web 2.0 is that there's no authoritative quality control except for the "wisdom of the crowd." Nothing is stopping my blog posts from getting equal billing with Shakespeare, and no one is acting as the editor for the average blog post and holding it back until they can finally exclaim, "Margaret, I like it!"
This is where I agree with Andrew: People need editors (some of us more than others) and critics to help them reach their potential. If Web 2.0 does kill the publishing industry as we know it, I will still hire an editor to help me fix up everything I write.
Where Andrew and I seem to disagree is that I strongly believe quality (combined with persistence and marketing) rises to the top at the end of the day. We'll watch garbage on YouTube Inc. , but when we want a good story, we'll pick up a book or go to a movie. Maybe, by some miracle, television networks and movie studios will die off because people aren't willing to buy what they're pushing. But it's not going to happen because of the Web and the availability of inexpensive high-quality communication and multimedia technologies. It's going to happen because people found a better alternative.
There are more ways to make a living as an artist today than ever before. I seriously doubt we'll have to worry about the next Elvis starving to death because there are no major music labels left to sign him.
Of course, I could be horribly wrong. Maybe people, left to their own devices, actually prefer reality shows, bad writing, and four-minute clips of teenagers talking about their day, to what Andrew and I would consider worthwhile entertainment. If that's the case, I think Andrew's job in the post-Web 2.0 world is just what it was before the Web -- to create and guide people toward the good stuff -- whether it's new or 400 years old.
— Chris Minnick, E-publishing consultant and CEO of Minnick Web Services
There's a lot of trash on YouTube. But there is actually some great
stuff on it too - the trick is finding it. One of the great things Web 2.0 has to offer is
discovering talent, people, and great things that might not ever be
discovered otherwise. For instance there was an Oprah show not long ago
about a girl Esmee Denters who was just a teenager, a waitress, who
started posting videos of herself singing on YouTube, just like tons of
other people are doing. She happened to be really good and created a
large following on YouTube. Some of her videos have been viewed millions of times. Now she has a record contract and a great start in
a career as a singer. http://www.esmeeworld.com/
We all know there are good and bad sides to every technology, and I'm sure that Web 2.0 will be no exception.
As I see it, the good side of web 2.0 is collaboration... just what we are doing now... on this blog. We are bouncing ideas off of each other in a way that we could never do before. We are better collectively than any of us are individually. I have always thought that the internet contains the total knowledge of mankind, and what better way make it accessible to all than through Web 2.0.
OK. What's the bad side? Disinformation can get diseminated quickly, and many people may believe it, particularly in the short run. As an example, look at the conspiracy theories that take on a life all their own. Many people have fallen for them, even if there are serious problems with them.
Call me a sentimental fool, but I like to believe that truth will prevail on the net, particularly if enough intelligent eyes are looking at it. What do you think?
First, what I mean by media "mediates" is not that media are just passive technical means. Seen from a certain viewpoint, "medium is the message". Yes, but the reason why media exist is people. Then it also sounds reasonable to see media as a social institution. You don't have the people who need to connect with each other, you don't have the media. Of course it is not that simple, but it is the crux of the matter.
Take press for an example. It was not until the size (and, thereby, economy, political organization, mobility, literacy, etc.) of the people reached a certain level that press was brought about. When people's characteristics change, media change. What I want to say here is that if a certain culture dies (in this case "old school" journalism, or "classical" encylopaedia, or what have you), it's not killed by the new medium. If that is the case, then this world is about medium killing each other, with human as the audience. A certain media/culture dies because people change (by what? Let's discuss this).
Secondly, you understand my point perfectly. You even develop the idea better to include the structure of knowledge production and the power inherently inscribed in the process. Maybe you could help us understand this point better and showing us recent phenomenon?
Or is there any philosopher here who could join this interesting topic and throw us some ideas?
Well I can't speak for everyone of course, but this certainly a ally I'd like to go into. In any case it is tangental to what we've been discussing before, on a more fundamental level.
I agree with you that a medium mediates, but I don't think it mediates between people. Media act in between people (subjects) and information or objects: it is through media that we make sense of the world around us. Media are not mere passive transmitters of information though –every medium frames information into an intelligible message. Web 2.0 greatly democratizes this process. Whereas in 'old' media like TV we ('the people') are only on one end of the tube, in web 2.0 we ourselves can (re)frame information into the world. This is a major accomplishment.
I'm not exactly sure if I understand your second point. If you suggest that the fragmented nature of online social production (wikipedia) and the amorphous structure of the www in general undermine the notion of the unified subject and objective meaning, I totally agree. That's why Deleuzian philosophy is so often applied to network theory.
I want to raise a point here about the role of media; I hope it's not out of topic.
I believe that one of media's role is to "mediate" (to connect people).
Therefore, the media depends upon the size, mobility, character, value, needs,
etc. of the people it mediates. Can Web 2.0 be considered media? Yes, of course. Then, what kind of mediacy do people need out of Web 2.0? I guess it is an interesting question to ask. Any comment people?
The second point I also want to highlight concerns authority. The bigger the society is the more they need mediacy. In our early phase of industrial age, print media helped establish our notion of authority by constructing subject as the source of meaning. Also our political and legal rights are based upon this notion of subject. We vote our president and rally on the street as subject. We write books, record music, and report news as a single and identified subject. What if there is no subject to be identified as the source of our meaning (as in wikipedia, for example)? Is there no truth? Or do we need a new way to establish what we consider as truth? I guess this kind of forum is the very place to discuss this point.
You are right.But, I just think that I pay attention at reviews that concern any commerce space( ebay, hotels,online stores...) But I don't really trust reviews on cultural space.I mean "strangers reviews".If my friend sends me a link and says "it's great" I will visit it, if some mister "great critic" does the same, I am not really sure if I do it.
Of course, at the end of the day we all should make our own decisions/judgments on what is and isn't "good stuff". What is good is relative. However, you would want all the help you can get or information which may help you in the process of making a decision. In my opinion, ratings or reviews from editors/customers/users are just something we can use as a guide. They are there to help in the process of decision making, but they don't make decisions for us, certainly not. Say you want to buy something off ebay, one thing you would want to check is the percentage of positive feedback that particular seller is rated (with respect to the number of customers), and perhaps some of the reviews before deciding whether to buy.
I think you've raised a good question about trust. It's maybe because we can't trust any particular individuals and so users' ratings (public opinoin) can come in handy as an indicator.
The world is big, and there is room for nearly everything in it.
I
always loved to read good books - and I still do, and so do my kids
- while at the same time consuming large amounts of free posted
information from the various wiki's and social networks.
The two - well edited controlled quality content and free posted
content - are not in contradiction; they rather complement each other.
Web 2 is not the one thing that will turn the whole world into a
distributed democracy, but it surely makes Internet more capable of contributing to
exactly that.
Maybe Web 2 does not make the information on the
Web more trustable for its quality, but it surely makes it easier to
publish and find useful bits of knowledge.
I only wish that Web X, X>2, will make Internet a safer and cleaner place - less unwanted content, less spam, etc.
I definitely agree with the statement about "cultural maker".
But the question I keep asking myself and other researches: Is " web" something really new, that could totally change the whole way of people nature..or it is just the new medium, the new tool for expression of human feelings, human culture..etc.
Does it change the basic concepts of human beings or it just changes the way of expressing them ( sorry for my english, hope you get what I mean)...
What "good stuff guide" is concerened.I don't think we need some "special guide". Whom will you trust? who will define (and decide)what is " a decent high quality context" for you and what is not... and how. Every person decides for him/herself.
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