The Cult of the Amateur’, Andrew Keen (summary)

'The Cult of the Amateur’, Andrew Keen (summary)

-       Web 2.0 (allowing the general public to publish online) destroys professionalism

-       It’s increasingly difficult (“impossible”) to find high quality materials amid the masses of User Generated Content.

-       Time Warner/Disney vs Google – Time Warner/Disney are creators of original content, Google is a ‘parasite’ (“it creates no content of its own”)

-       He blames the internet for loss of income to certain businesses and uses Craigslist as an example (site for classified ads – similar to Gumtree) – esp says Newspapers losing income for classified ads

-       Intellectuals lose the ability to create focus – i.e. you can’t hear the ‘experts’ for all the talk/chatter

-       Modern social culture has been regulated and analysed before it reaches the masses, he says this filtering by experts is circumvented by the UGC on the web

-       He thinks “cultural standards and moral values” are under threat from new media innovations (ask yourself whose standard and values?!)

-       He sees the internet as being the power of the crowd (rather like Brabazon’s ‘mob rule’) and says “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise” (read as he doesn't approve of certain tastes as much as there are inherent problems with giving certain groups and points of view unfettered access to the web's audience which we might more readily all agree with (e.g. we might all agree that the internet could give racist organisations a voice and access to a bigger audience which we may more readily not find ideal/want)

-       He is concerned with “the blurring of the distinction between the qualified and informed professional and the uninformed and unqualified amateur.” (quoting A Trewavas in his book Trends in Biotechnology – sourced (ironically) from Wikipedia!)