A few days ago, after reading the first half of Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur” I wrote a post predicting that some of the high profile educational bloggers pushing web 2.0 applications would acknowledge this book and offer a refutation. So far my prediction has failed to materialize.
I do hope this book receives attention within the educational technology community. I am not endorsing all of the ideas, nor do I regard this as a scholarly treatment of the subject, but I do think many of the ideas expressed in this book need to be openly stated so that the issues can be debated.
The core themes of this book are interrelated. One of the core themes laments the decline in financial incentives assuring quality information and entertainment sources. A second core theme concerns the nature of expertise, and our appreciation of expertise and what it takes to develop and sustain expert sources. A third theme concerns the shoddy practices of those involved in the participatory web. Factors related to these themes include:
Factor 1 – redirection of revenue sources funding the production of quality resources. For example, options for online ads (free alternatives to classified ads and other ways of offering ads from companies to consumers) have taken away a fundamental source of revenue.
Factor 2 – tolerance for secondary source and amateur opinion in place of original work and expert opinion.
Factor 3 – acceptance of outright theft of the intellectual proporty of others.
Why any of this matters?
In the long run, we have access to information and cultural works of poor quality because there is little incentive to offer quality resources
We accept plagiarism and theft as acceptable behaviors.
We accept the opinions of those we agree with rather than challenge ourselves to process thoughtful analysis offered by objective experts.
What is the relevance to education?
Education is highly dependent on quality resources.
Education plays a pivotal role in developing values and responsible behavior.
Education plays an important role in developing information literacy.
Educators may use many of the resources and experiences Keen argues may be problematic.
Keen, A. (2007). The cult of the amateur: How today’s Internet is killing our culture. Doubleday: New York.
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