June 13, 2007
cnn this morning
[CNN offices in London.]
At 6.30am this morning I made a brief appearance on CNN Europe. They asked me in to give my opinion on Andrew Keen’s new book, “The Cult of The Amateur– How’s Today Internet Is Killing Our Culture”.
I said I thought Andrew Keen’s book was missing the point somewhat. I said the big story about the internet is not how much it kills what Andrew refers to as “culture”, the big story about the internet is, as I’m forever quoting Clay Shirky,
“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this — the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.”
I asked Andrew on his blog comments a few months ago, “if blogs are as dreadful as you say they are, surely that will increase demand for quality, non-amateur product from people like yourself?”
Then if so, why is that not happening? Why aren’t people leaving the internet in droves and heading down to their local bookshop? Why aren’t newspaper sales figures shooting skywards? What aren’t Web 2.0 companies scrambling to get into traditional publishing, and not the other way around?
I never really got a proper answer from him. What the heck, though we may have disagreed on certain points, he was polite and gracious the whole time.
But a wee voice tells me that the world Andrew would prefer us living in no longer exists. Maybe it never did.
And by all accounts the mainstream newspaper circulation numbers are dwindling in favour of online reading.
As I said previously, I have not done so much reading since blogging started. My intake of news and material of interest far outweighs all my previous years of reading.
And funnily enough I am reading more books too! My library has grown exponentionaly with my online reading habit.
Yerah — I actally bought Steinbeck last year. Something I would not have got around to had reading blogs and my own blogging not triggered the desire.
So Read Online man!
Gee, do you think it just might be because a product being “non-amateur” (i.e. a second-hand product now owned by a corporation rather than the original creator) doesn’t actually guarantee *quality*? Could creative product that is “released” (i.e. “escapes from”) corporate shops actually *suffer* by the process of “professional” productization?
This is unlikely to be a popular concept with RIAA member companies…or a certain unnnamed software house fond of publicly sneering at “hobbyist” developers. Disintermediation isn’t usually thought highly of by paid intermediaries.
I couldn’t agree more with the quote by Clay Shirky. That’s the one inescapable fact that most traditionally oriented people can’t grasp and it’s the reason we’re on the cusp of a modern renaissance.
In my very humble opinion,
Nowadays, you have to get “online” to be “in line” with things that are happening in real time. The trickle down of inked news onto paper is passing.
My local paper that used to be thick with advertisements is now too thin to roll up and swat flies with. In past years, the backpage boasted colorful display ads of available real estate, now it is a full page ad for graveyard plots. I guess in a sense that still may be considered real estate.
I just watched the speech he gave at google and wrote a similar critique on my blog.
Anyway, it’s nice to hear a counter argument. We’re all entitled to our opinions.
Your last statement really rings true. Amateurs have been given an increasing voice every time there is a development in communication. There has never been a world without widely professed and baseless opinions being broadcast as fact.
As I said in a recent blog post …
“This isn’t really a new problem. I’m sure people said many of the same things about the printing press, the radio and television. They probably said the same things about the public address system (He’s so loud. Everyone will thing he’s right).”
There might even have been backlash against the first chisels. After all, they allowed any idiot with a hammer the ability to permanently record their thoughts.
The burden of discovering truth lies on the reader, the listener or the watcher. If you believe every stupid thing you read online than who is at fault? The writers? Or you for failing to check “facts”? Everyone has a right to express an opinion, but it doesn’t mean you have to buy it.
Lastly, a quote to illustrate the point …
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Mark Twain or Thomas Jefferson
I think it’s a long lost cousin of the question “qui custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“who watches the watchers?”) that we’ve just now discovered: “Which expert chooses the experts?” (My latin conjugation is weak sauce, so I won’t even bother attempting.)
Say what you want about market dynamics and a winning producer’s intuition, no human that I know is “always on”. An expert occasionally misses. Even critics often recognize that. What we’re busy discovery is the power of the “contrapositive” statement: Even a non-expert occasionally has a startling hit. I hate the word “crowdsourcing”, but I love what it means: letting even the loneliest pearl bubble out of the crud through the power of lots and lots of “amateurs”.
I just read the online excerpt of Andrew Keen’s book, and I must say: it was surprisingly uninsightful.
Hugh — as usual — nailed it.
In a bookstore, the famous chef of a five-star restaurant mumbled:
“Why are they selling these recipe books to complete amateurs? Can’t they see that the amateurs are killing the art of cooking?”
I feel a sense of fear in what Andrew is saying. Very much like the fear of losing the self pride I’ve seen people back home have in India’s ‘culture’. If it’s really quality that he cares for, it will take care of itself. It’s quality that makes me read gapingvoid everyday. Although there are millions of blogs online, it’s only a handful I read regularly — again, reason being top quality. Bad writing has always been around. It’s just that the numbers have shot up now. Even so, it’s still down to individual discernment.
As with any new thing, it’s easy to criticise and resist it. But it does take some effort and talent to be with it and create some positive contribution.
I guess what Keen’s brought to our attention is generation gap 2.0.
Working at a newspaper, I’m on the front line of the changes. The only reason our publications still exist is because of the scrap booking craze and souveneir issues. We’ve been on our publisher’s case just to get them to see the potential of having a good up to date web-site. Print guys are so old school.
In the past we confused the scarcity of access to media with scarcity of talent. I heard better musicians in the Tube than I saw on The Tube, blogging is just that writ large.
Nothing like a good yet misguided opinion, hyper-inflated into a tree-killing book in this case, to get the conversation going! But I really wish Keen would take on some of the cool kids doing the coolest new media on the planet, such as literal planet-hopper Jim Long of Verge New Media.com, an NBC, union cameraman by trade. Jim’s excellent blog entry, following a whirlwind world tour with Sect. Gates, on the power of social media, while busily committing old-style media, is here:
http://vergenewmedia.com/2007/06/17/building-relationships-with-social-media-tools/