Reading The Cult of the Amateur By Andrew Keen in 2023

Reading The Cult of the Amateur By Andrew Keen in 2023

Byrichard

During yesterday’s walk I found that I could read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen as an audiobook so I listened to a few minutes. It took me back in time to 2006 when people worried about the detrimental effect that bloggers that were not accountable would have on information, disinformation, reliability and accountability. At the time people worried that bloggers and certain social networks would spread inaccurate information and manipulate people.


Fast forward today and you see that the fear we had, that blogs would be unreliable and unaccountable was wrong. We see that with Fox News, GB News, Russia Today, Facebook, Twitter and other sources of information the threat did not come from blogs, but rather it came from the people who bought media companies to control what was said and covered, and by social media networks like Facebook, which was used to gain big data in order to manipulate voters when Trump was elected, and Brexit. Read Mindf*ck for context.


Musk recently bought Twitter, so Twitter has gone from being a great source for quick news and updates to an unreliable resource used by the Far Right to manipulate the less astute into thinking along their chosen lines.


It turns out that misleading people, through blogging is time consuming. First you need people to write content, and then you need others to read it. It requires a lot of time and effort. In 2023 you don’t need much time and effort. A tweet can be read in a second or two, and troll armies can shape a conversation, and algorithms can skew what you see towards one way of thinking rather than the other.


When I was walking I thought “If he wrote an update to this book it would be called “The Religion of the Amateur” because user generated content has become ruler. Look at TikTok, Clickbait YouTube, Instagram and even Twitter, under Musk.


Years ago social media was measured in friendships, conference attended and collaborations. Today it is measured by sheep herding, rather than personal connections. People are looking for a mass audience, rather than a social network. Someone said “I’m followed by 8000 people and my tweets have been viewed 3 million times.” I see such a tweet and I see that social media has lost one of its unique characteristics. Human level personal connections.


The Cult has become a religion, and manipulation and disinformation is worse than ever. I need to finish the book to give a proper evaluation but it’s interesting to read the book with the advantage of hindsight.


That’s it for today.

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The Cult of the Amateur – thoughts on the book

Byrichard

When I heard with what hate one podcaster talked about the Cult Of The Amateur I told myself that I should read this book because it addresses a question that is at least two hundred years old, mainly the difference between high culture and low culture. High culture is seen as everything that has taken research and thought to create whilst popular culture is anything else. High culture might be a painting displayed in a museum whilst popular culture is something that most people could succeed in doing themselves.

The book begins with the idea that an infinite amount of monkeys can produce the work of Shakespeare given enough time. The fact they may write Shakespeare is not the problem. Andrew Keen, the author is more worried by all the uninteresting, inaccurate content that is produced and how easily it is spread. He is worried that as websites like myspace and youtube become more popular so the level of the product is degraded. He sees this as having a negative effect on culture.

He works from the premise that, back around 1999, when he was part of the first internet boom he had the idea that the World Wide Web would help distribute great works of art and culture, from Tchaikovsky to Stendhal and others. He was disappointed that at a Friend of O’reilly’s meeting people were concentrating on user-generated content rather than high culture.

That is one part of the story. Another of his concerns is that people are writing about topics they know little or nothing about and as a result are spreading disinformation. He looks at a few examples in politics and current affairs to show how there are some failings within the new media landscape. This made me think of how important the university would become. If everyone is a writer/editor and publisher so it would make sense that they train to become experts in their chosen field. Anyone can write and share their knowledge but that is no reason for the work to be sloppy.

Look at the Roman section of my website. I wrote it ten years ago when I wanted to write down everything I knew about the Romans and within a short time it had been formatted for the web. Over the years people found the site and found that the information was useful therefore they referenced it. As a result of this, I became a resource for school children worldwide. I had no credentials. I was an IGCSE and then IB student as I worked on various parts.

Finally, ten years later I’ve graduated, and through learning the academic process the value of the content I produce has improved. I have gained slightly in authority. When I listen to people speak about the media and how it works I have familiarity with two hundred years of technological progress therefore I am familiar with some of the “old media” and how they influenced popular and media culture. As a result of my studies, I found myself disagreeing with one podcaster and how he expressed anger against Andrew Keen and “The cult of The Amateur”. Such views should not be expressed.

One aspect that is of particular interest to all those that I have studied with and myself is that of the amateur as a producer of content. When you have six thousand people who are writing about specific themes for free where is the demand for the professional author or content producer. He takes the example of advertising and how because amateurs want their content to be seen, offer this to advertising firms. As a result advertising firms save a lot of money. Personally I believe that this is a trend that is popular because of how cheap the means of production have become but that within a number of years the passion for users generating their own content may disappear.

As more and more hobbyists and amateurs produce media content so the role of the professional becomes more uncertain. Why spend years studying at university to be a media producer or journalist if a construction worker is making films in his free time for no money and distributing it to a global audience? It’s an interesting time to work in the media because of how affordable technology has become. I have everything it takes to create and distribute video comfort from the place where I am living in London. As long as I get a good documentary idea I can carry out every stage of the production process without going through the production companies. As a result of this, I have complete editorial control.

Andrew Keen is getting us to pay attention to questions that it is essential we answer. Who is our audience, how are they getting our content, how reliable is it and how can we sustain ourselves to continue doing what we enjoy?

My thoughts on “If we are all amateurs, there are no experts.”

Byrichard

Andrew Keen’s new book, The Cult of the Amateur is the latest addition to the Newsnight book club. In it, the author expresses his concern for the profligacy of online amateurism, spawned by the digital revolution. This, he feels, has had a destructive impact on our culture, economy, and values.

Web 2.0 is a state of play by which anyone generating content can share it with an audience of hundreds of thousands or even millions depending on its mass appeal. As a result, the quality of media content that certain generations are taking in has gone down.

Whilst the occasional work on youtube may be good there are hundreds of thousands of clips that are absolute crap. They’re long takes with no editing, just letting things happen. One of these such videos is of a pack of buffalo by a stream. A pride of lions captures the young before a crocodile attempts to get its share of the kill. Unfortunately, it fails and the lions finally think their meal is ready. They didn’t plan on the herd coming back. The clip ends with the young buffalo rejoining its herd once more and the predators are still hungry.

What is annoying about these two clips are the duration and the window size. An editor would do his best to find the key moments. In taking the key moments and making a one minute subject the audience would have gained far more. It would also have saved us time. In HD I’m sure it’d be beautiful but as a small window on a browser, it’s disappointing.

That’s the issue with online material. Everyone believes that they can do what they want when they want and then share it with the world. One of the last twitters I received is from Ijustine which read “Just got yelled at for wearing ‘a webcam'” because she’s decided to do the same as Justin from justin.tv. What’s the point of this. I understand the appeal of something like twitter but the live streaming of video seems to be taking it too far. Why are so many people flooding the world wide web with such extraneous content? I don’t want to watch Ijustine sitting at her computer at 3 am as she’s doing as I type this.

Where is the media literacy training that should come with this new generation of web users? Who is to decide what is socially acceptable or not. Is it acceptable to strap a camera to your head and film everything that is going on around you or is that a breach of confidence? Is it worthwhile?

Who’s going to make sense of this new media landscape. Current TV is supposed to be one of the new waves of user-generated content but does it achieve this. How can you boast about creating a user-generated channel when it’s scrambled so that only through payment can you watch the channel. It’s contradictory.

There is a group of podcasters who do a good job of creating web content. The TWIT podcasts are one of these, Mobuzz TV is another to a lesser degree. NPR’s On The media is fascinating. These are examples of how technology can be used to provide high-quality content for a lesser price.

In summary, technology has made it easy for anyone with an idea for a program to distribute it widely over the world wide web. Most of it is absolutely terrible and no one would be interested in the content whilst other elements are brilliant. Whilst everyone is seeing this as a new form of communication there is a lot of material that will never appeal to a mass audience. We must simply wait for a new model to emerge whereby the flood of crap will decrease greatly.

I’m looking forward to the end of this transition period