Amateur manifesto :)

I am so intrigued by Keen’s (2007) book “The cult of the amateur”. Although I’m not a real blogger (I don’t blog except for the purpose of this class) I found very offensive phrases such as “… instead of creating masterpieces, these millions and millions of exuberant monkeys – many with no more talent in the creative arts than our primate cousins – are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity” (p.2-3). I think his metaphor is completely off and transmits a deep disrespect for human beings in general. So, everybody who is attempting to voice an opinion in a domain in which s/he is not an expert (by the way how does he define expertise?) is committing a moral sin and should be degraded from the human race?! Should we all shut up because we are not “experts”?! Should we all stay mute and bend our head in awe to the mighty “expert”?! This make me think of all the beginners in communities of practice. We are all novices at some point in our careers and our lives. We are not born “experts”, we are not born rocket scientists, chemical engineers or medical doctors but we surely can become one. But how do we learn to be one? Do we do it by keeping our mouth shut and opening it just to take our spoon of knowledge and truth from an expert? Or do we do it by engaging ourselves into dialogue with other novices and experts alike? Do we learn by regurgitating expert content or by thinking and talking about all around us?

It seems that Keen’s perception of the threat of the Internet reflects a positivistic perspective. He advocates the existence of a unique Truth and belittles shared understanding and multiple perspectives. He argues: “Truth … is being flattened, as we create an on-demand, personalized version that reflects our own individual myopia. One person’s truth becomes as “true” as anyone else’s. Today’s media is shattering the world into a billion personalized truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile” (p.17). I’m asking: what is wrong with multiple truths and perspectives? Is the world really shattered apart just because a “simple” mind has a chance to express its thoughts? And how is this threatening the “valid” knowledge proposed by the “experts”? I‘d think that what is valid cannot be shattered so easily. And if something shatters it means it was not so solid after all.

Another annoying idea is that Keen judges all the content-creators on the Internet by the value of the blog content of some of us. There is more to Web 2.0 than trivial blogs and My Space profiles.
The idea of amateurism is somewhat connected to Shirky’s distinction between perfection and perfectability. After all what should we aim for: unreachable perfection or human perfectability? I think that waiting to become “perfect” (or “expert”) and then talking/writing is not constructive if we think in terms of communities of practice whose progress depends on conversation/dialogue/interaction between new-comers and old-times (novices and experts). Perfectability is instead a better frame which describes the new-comers’ goal of contributing to the discourse of the community.

Keen’s apocalyptic vision (i.e., “Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave” p. 28) can be discussed in terms of distribution of power. Whereas in the past, gatekeepers such as journalists and editors detained the power of information, now this is being distributed across users and contents. However, I don’t think power is equally distributed and thus I don’t understand why Keen fears so much this new reality. In this “noise of a hundred million bloggers all simultaneously talking about themselves” (p.16) there still is enough space for professional journalism; the only difference is that there are more voices to compete. Theoretically this is an opportunity for perfectability for all parties involved. Isn’t it?