Last night, at The University of Iowa SLIS Journal Club, there was a rather lively discussion regarding Andrew Keen's the cult of the amateur. Several members of the club were shocked that I had actually purchased the book. There was a general feeling among the my colleagues that Keen's book was nothing more than a series of poorly argued, and illogical, statements that add up to nothing more than elitism. I agree that there are major problems with Keen's arguments. He assails wikipedia for allowing anyone to edit an entry, which leads to a toxic amount of democracy. So much democracy that nothing can be agreed upon and that the users of Wikipedia get inaccurate information (see pages 36-38 for Keen's own words).
I feel that this attack on Wikipedia is unfounded, but that is beside the point. The value of the cult of the amateur is that it highlights the degree to which people find themselves entertaining/important. What I really like about this book is the fact that, I believe, Keen comes back to an idea about the cult of the individual. I wonder if Keen would have a problem with digital culture if the people taking part were not so self-obsessed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I think it's too easy to dismiss young people's public displays of self-revelation as "self-obsession." The March issue of First Monday has a great article on social networking and empowerment, "Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance," by Anders Albrechtslund. (This whole issue is worth a looksie, if you ever get time...)
In a nutshell:
"By exhibiting their lives, people claim “copyright” to their own lives [9], as they engage in the self–construction of identity. This reverts the vertical power relation, as visibility becomes a tool of power that can be used to rebel against the shame associated with not being private about certain things. Thus, exhibitionism is liberating, because it represents a refusal to be humble [10]."
I think we're all self-obsessed to a degree, it's just that for those of us born before 1980 or so, our formative years weren't surveilled nearly as heavily as they would have been today. We weren't forced to contruct our identities so publicly, thus we feel shameful about revealing "too much" information about ourselves. Why should OUR comfort level stand as the yardstick against which the younger generation's degree of self-obsession is measured?
Also, the Internets is gigantor. Why does it matter what other people are putting out there? There's room for everyone and everything. It's the job of information ninjas like us to help people navigate and weed out the crap, whether through personal interaction, or kickass web design, or etc. If we can't accept that challenge, we should really rethink our career paths.
Post a Comment