The cult of the amateur?

Here are some of my comments on:

Keen, Andrew. (2007). The cult of the amateur: how today’s Internet is killing our culture. New York: Currency Books.

In the book “the cult of the amateur: how today’s Internet is killing our culture” Andrew Keen show us his pessimistic perspective of the Internet.

According to Keen, the Internet is destroying music, media, economy and people, in special the professionals. In a very biased way, he tells us stories about huge music shops, music recorders and newspapers that went out of the business. Although in the very last few pages of the book he envisions a way in which the Internet can be good, matching professionals and the web, during the whole book he sticks to the point that the Internet is very bad for all of us.

One of the main points he defends in the first half of the book is that Internet gives a lot of credit to amateurs, leaving professionals behind or out or work.

According to him only professionals should write and publish news, only professionals should play, record and publish music, because everything that is done by non-professionals is not good, or is junk. This is a very strange idea if we consider all the great things many amateurs do and share on the Internet (or not). (Without even touching the matter of what being a professional means).

Media is biased, we know that professionals most of the times have to follow the news agencies agendas and political line, and are not free do write and express exactly what they know or think. Besides that, we cannot think that all professionals have always good intentions and disseminate the news in an objective and impartial way. There is no such impartiality and objectivity when communication is concerned.

If we consider the Arab Spring and movements like what we saw in Brazil during the confederations’ soccer cup in 2013, we will see very clearly that amateurs are not sharing only silly and low culture at social networks, they are exchanging information, they are discussing their rights and exercising their power as critical, conscious and active citizens.

Wikipedia may not be perfect, but if you think it is not good, the idea is that you should go there and help to make it better. Complain without acting is not a welcome behavior. If is not correct, fix it.

Pedophilia, pornography, gambling, crimes and many other problems the author attributes to internet have always been part of the human history. Internet is not introducing it. And, of course, we need to find ways to avoid that those things destroy or spoil the life of many people. Education for digital times must alert people, including students of all ages about security at the internet as well.

Keen talks about the Internet as being guilty for many social and cultural problems we face, without mentioning all the good things it brings to us. I could mention many good reasons to give all support to the Internet and free access to culture, but I will mention only online education that is increasing and proving to be a very trustable and honest way to improve the education of many students in many countries.

I do not mean to say and I do not believe that Internet includes only good things, as well as I do not believe that CDs, books, newspapers, movies produced by professionals are always good. We have good and bad materials in both worlds. All we need now is a very good educational system that includes the digital universe not only to have the students produce quality materials to share, as well as to make them very good and critical readers of the multimodal texts that circulate on the Internet and outside of it under the chancel or seal of famous publishers or brands.

In a very pessimistic or even apocalyptic view of Internet 2.0, and in a very elitist perspective, Andrew Keen, talks about the Internet using an aggressive ironic language, blaming the Internet for all kinds of problems we face as individuals and as a society. It is worth saying that those problems belong to the humanity for hundreds or thousands of years and they are not the computers fault.

Keen closes one of the chapters of the book called ‘moral disorder’ with the following paragraph:

From hypersexed teenagers, to identity thieves, to compulsive gamblers and addicts of all stripes, the moral fabric of our society is being unraveled by Web 2.0. I seduces us into acting on our most deviant instincts and allows us to succumb to our most destructive vices. And it is corroding and corrupting the values we share as a nation.” (p.163).

According to Keen, Paul Simon said that “We’re going to 2.0” (p. 113), and added “Like it or not, that is what is going to happen”(p.113). That is exactly the point. It is not worth it to complain and blame the computer and the Internet 2.0 for all our problems. Internet changed our world, challenged economy as well as many professions and jobs. It is forcing our creativity and having many people, professionals and entrepreneurs to adapt their business and life style to a different society in certain aspects. It also created, and is still creating, many other hobbies, jobs and professions. It gives voice to many people, it distributes information and knowledge to many people. This is our new chance to offer society similar opportunities to learn by giving access to information and culture that is not only produced for and by the aristocracy.

However as it usually happens with most novelties, we need to find the best way to use it. We need to help people to deal with it in the best and most fruitful way as possible. One of the ways to do that is preparing good and critical readers of online texts.