Category: General

Cult of the Amateur

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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The monkeys have taken control

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.

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Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at D5

If you have a sense of history related to the personal computer or are interested in how some of the leaders of the field imagine the future, you will likely find an hour and one-half interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of value (search iTunes podcasts for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at D5). The participants work hard to dispel the common notion that they are constantly at odds. There is not a great deal of content concerning educational issues, but there is some.

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Back to using people

A new search engine – mahalo – has recently launched. The idea is to use guides (people) to identify the most useful sites.

The guides will attempt to locate:

1. … sites that are considered authorities in their field (i.e. Edmunds for autos, Engadget for consumer electronics, and the New York Times for news).
2. … sites which create original, high-quality content on a consistent basis.
3. … sites that have been operating for over one year. Sites under a year will be considered, but most will be placed in a “member-submitted” section at the bottom of the page until they hit the one-year mark.
4. … sites that have clean layout, design, and a modest amount of advertising.

If you feel worthy, you can submit your site for consideration.

I learned that “mahalo” is the Hawaiian word for thank-you on a recent trip. Not sure what the connection is here unless we are to be thankful that someone has eliminated unwanted “hits” from our searches.

Hasn’t this been tried a few times before and evidently without sufficient success to compete with Google? I get the idea, but I bet most people search for too many personal topics for an “expert-selected” approach to work on an everyday basis. For general topics when expertise/quality is an issue, the page rank system that considers the popularity of links to a site already considers the collective decisions of many web page authors. Why would a group of selected “guides” offer an advantage?

This sounds like a test of the collective intelligence vs. expert distinction that was at the core of “The Wisdom of Crowds”. I guess I think it is a good idea that new approaches are continually offered up.

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CNN Pipeline Will Be Free

Deja vu! I do not purchase access to many online services, but when I do, it seems that the service is then made available for free. Back in the day, if you wanted to include images in your blogger account, you had to pay a fee for Blogger Pro. I did this and then Blogger decided to allow anyone to include images in blog posts. I paid for a service to “time shift” online radio content (radiotime). That service also went free, but dropped service for the Mac.

Today I receive an email indicating that CNN Pipeline will be free beginning July 1.

Pipeline

This is a nice service that streams quality video content. Sometimes I like to listen/watch while at the office. This is not the same feed you would get through your television, but content specifically prepared for the Internet.

Telling folks about this now will probably do little good. However, when the transition comes, I will likely not notice the change and remember to encourage use of this service.

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Fact Check

Holding public officials accountable (e.g., Dan Rather) has been touted as one of accomplishments of bloggers. I was listening to public radio this morning and heard an interview with one of the core group from factcheck.org. This individual discussed “spin” and our tendency to be taken in. The example I remember concerned a famous Republican ad in the Bush-Kerry presidential election. You probably remember the ad – it contained a pack of running wolves and a statement that after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Kerry had voted to decrease funding for the intelligence community. What the ad failed to make clear was that the “attack” was the bombing in the 1980s and Kerry had voted on several occasions to increase funding since. So, the information, but not the intended message was truthful. The emotional component (the wolves) and personal beliefs tend to lead to the “interpretation” intended by those sponsoring the ad.

FactCheck focuses on political issues and is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. I see they also have a book – “unSpun”.

FactCheckEd (a division I assume) offers educational resources for secondary school.

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