Comments on: E-books, Wikipedia and The Cult of the Amateur http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/06/29/e-books-wikipedia-and-the-cult-of-the-amateur/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:43:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Robert Nagle http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/06/29/e-books-wikipedia-and-the-cult-of-the-amateur/#comment-534373 Robert Nagle Tue, 18 Sep 2007 05:36:29 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6771#comment-534373 I saw Keen interviewed on PBS newshour, and he gave stock, shallow & dismissive answers. Two counterexamples. First, (cited by Eric Raymond) open source software like Firefox tends to be higher quality precisely because it is noncommercial and not dependent on strict deadlines and time-to-market pressures. Second, his criticism might stick a bit with blogging, but with writing/publishing, the vast majority of high quality prose and poetry go unnoticed. Nowadays though, at least if Emily Dickinson is publishing poetry on her blog, there's an outside chance someone might stumble upon it. Under Keen's scenario, apparently writing gains validity only by being submitted to & accepted by the "culture industries." the implication of his argument (at least as presented to me) is that it's not worth people's time to hunt down & discover the hidden gems of the Internet. to the extent that it wastes people's time, I guess he has a point. But oddly, as I grow older, I am more inclined to read a random novel or webpage than to trust what the experts and mainstream critics have told me I'm supposed to like. When you condemn the Net populism that brings our attention to videos of cats jumping on trampolines, you also give people an excuse to dismiss underground and avante-garde art. Frankly, I'm growing sick of critics at mainstream media outlets who use their megaphone to warn us of the dangers of amateurism. The implication seems to be that commercial TV and Time-Warner journalism can be trusted not to promote itself. I saw Keen interviewed on PBS newshour, and he gave stock, shallow & dismissive answers. Two counterexamples. First, (cited by Eric Raymond) open source software like Firefox tends to be higher quality precisely because it is noncommercial and not dependent on strict deadlines and time-to-market pressures. Second, his criticism might stick a bit with blogging, but with writing/publishing, the vast majority of high quality prose and poetry go unnoticed. Nowadays though, at least if Emily Dickinson is publishing poetry on her blog, there’s an outside chance someone might stumble upon it. Under Keen’s scenario, apparently writing gains validity only by being submitted to & accepted by the “culture industries.” the implication of his argument (at least as presented to me) is that it’s not worth people’s time to hunt down & discover the hidden gems of the Internet. to the extent that it wastes people’s time, I guess he has a point. But oddly, as I grow older, I am more inclined to read a random novel or webpage than to trust what the experts and mainstream critics have told me I’m supposed to like.

When you condemn the Net populism that brings our attention to videos of cats jumping on trampolines, you also give people an excuse to dismiss underground and avante-garde art.

Frankly, I’m growing sick of critics at mainstream media outlets who use their megaphone to warn us of the dangers of amateurism. The implication seems to be that commercial TV and Time-Warner journalism can be trusted not to promote itself.

]]> By: Branko Collin http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/06/29/e-books-wikipedia-and-the-cult-of-the-amateur/#comment-446940 Branko Collin Sun, 01 Jul 2007 09:01:17 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6771#comment-446940 Bleah. Bleah.

]]> By: Garson O'Toole http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/06/29/e-books-wikipedia-and-the-cult-of-the-amateur/#comment-446246 Garson O'Toole Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:53:59 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6771#comment-446246 Multi-prize-winning science fiction <a HREF="http://sfwriter.com/2007/06/cult-of-amateur.html" rel="nofollow">author Robert J. Sawyer gives Keen's polemic five stars (out of five) on Amazon</A> and says:<blockquote>William Gibson once said that the job of the science-fiction writer (which is what both he and I do for a living) is to be profoundly ambivalent about changes in science and technology. To date, we've had way too much on the plus side of blogging, Wikipedia, Facebook, and, yes, Amazon.com, with very few countervailing voices. You may not agree with everything Keen says -- I certainly don't myself, although I do agree with a lot of it</blockquote>Of course Sawyer might be viewed as just another amateur book critic of questionable competence. Hence, readers may wish to seek out the opinions of professionally credentialed book critics also. :-) Multi-prize-winning science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer gives Keen’s polemic five stars (out of five) on Amazon and says:
William Gibson once said that the job of the science-fiction writer (which is what both he and I do for a living) is to be profoundly ambivalent about changes in science and technology. To date, we’ve had way too much on the plus side of blogging, Wikipedia, Facebook, and, yes, Amazon.com, with very few countervailing voices. You may not agree with everything Keen says — I certainly don’t myself, although I do agree with a lot of it

Of course Sawyer might be viewed as just another amateur book critic of questionable competence. Hence, readers may wish to seek out the opinions of professionally credentialed book critics also. :-)

]]> By: Brian Carnell http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/06/29/e-books-wikipedia-and-the-cult-of-the-amateur/#comment-445541 Brian Carnell Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:48:38 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6771#comment-445541 The Lessig link claims that Keen argues that the problem with something like Wikipedia is not vetted for accuracy, but of course neither are books from most non-academic publishers (and what I mean there is they are not given thorough fact checking). When you do a thorough look at both amateurs and professionals, what you typically find is that quality is all over the place. I've seen bloggers who do better jobs covering complex issues than major newspapers. On the other hand, you only have to spend a few hours reading through the comments at Digg on any topic to realize there are plenty of people who feel no qualms asserting their opinions on topics of which they have, at best, only rudimentary knowledge. I think the more interesting thing is not quality but how markets for cultural products are going to become more and more niche-based. One of the things about the pre-Internet world is that it wasn't enough that I have a high-quality product -- I also had to have a product that appealed to enough people to justify the effort of publishing, etc. That's no longer true. I pay for things online all the time, including books, that would simply not exist without the Internet because the market is so small that marketing costs alone would never justify going forward. But today, there are people making nice incomes filling these niches. The Lessig link claims that Keen argues that the problem with something like Wikipedia is not vetted for accuracy, but of course neither are books from most non-academic publishers (and what I mean there is they are not given thorough fact checking).

When you do a thorough look at both amateurs and professionals, what you typically find is that quality is all over the place. I’ve seen bloggers who do better jobs covering complex issues than major newspapers. On the other hand, you only have to spend a few hours reading through the comments at Digg on any topic to realize there are plenty of people who feel no qualms asserting their opinions on topics of which they have, at best, only rudimentary knowledge.

I think the more interesting thing is not quality but how markets for cultural products are going to become more and more niche-based.

One of the things about the pre-Internet world is that it wasn’t enough that I have a high-quality product — I also had to have a product that appealed to enough people to justify the effort of publishing, etc. That’s no longer true. I pay for things online all the time, including books, that would simply not exist without the Internet because the market is so small that marketing costs alone would never justify going forward. But today, there are people making nice incomes filling these niches.

]]> By: Travis http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/06/29/e-books-wikipedia-and-the-cult-of-the-amateur/#comment-445485 Travis Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:07:50 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6771#comment-445485 I prefer to leave it to Lawrence Lessig to offer the best examination yet of Mr. Keen's prattling rant. Mr. Lessig's critique can be found on his weblog: http://lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html I prefer to leave it to Lawrence Lessig to offer the best examination yet of Mr. Keen’s prattling rant. Mr. Lessig’s critique can be found on his weblog:

http://lessig.org/blog/2007/05/keens_the_cult_of_the_amateur.html

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