I watch Twins baseball a lot and as a by product I have become interested in the on-air antics of broadcasters Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven. One of the more entertaining multi-game stories from last year was the end of the year “call contest”. Making a “call” is a big deal. It is essentially confidently predicting a fairly low probability event and is usually done at a time when the home team needs a lift. A home run during any given at-bat is a low probability event. A double-play is a fairly low probability event. The mystique of being able to “make a call” supports the assumed special skills and the great “baseball minds” of the broadcasters.
Toward the end of the last season, the commentators decided to engage in a contest to compare their abilities to make a call. If I remember the details, the event was to run over 7 games and each broadcaster was to make one call a game (this also seems to be one of the unwritten rules of making a call – you make one call a game). The winner was to be the individual who make the most successful calls. Again, if I remember correctly, Burt got out to an early lead. Dick then began to make calls that pushed the boundaries. The nature of these calls and the use of this strategy after Burt had already made an unsuccessful call really seemed to create some hard feelings. Predicting that Johan Santana will strike someone out in the next two innings (I made this one up) is not exactly within the spirit of making a call. Towards the end, the broadcasters were appealing to boys in the truck to determine what constituted a valid call.
I have no idea why I thought of that story, but here is a call.
Within the next two weeks, those of you who follow educational blogs will confront and be bothered by the analysis contained in a book by Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur).
The book laments the general decline brought on by Web 2.0:
“… democratization, despite its lofty idealization, is undermining truth, souring civic discourse, and belittling expertise, experience, and talent.” (p. 15).
The focus is on the evils of blogs, wikipedia, iTunes, Digg, etc. It is about our willingness to settle for what is free and mediocre. It is about how we are being duped by our idealism. It is about our failure to understand that our online selections and off-line buying habits are removing the financial support for expertise and careful production of information resources and redirecting these resources to “providers” (Google, etc., I guess).
I have to consider more carefully what I think of the arguments in this book. I promise more on this topic within a few days.
I just wanted to register my “call”.
The thing about monkey? It is a reference to Huxley’s comment about enough monkeys, enough typewriters, etc.
One final comment. I was curious enough to check whether Andrew Keen had a blog. It is just the way my mind works. Sure enough – The Great Seduction.
