For some reason, posting on this blog has recently felt like an actor's nightmare. I feel as if I'm dancing around naked (not a pretty sight, I assure you) in front of a sound-proof, one-way mirror, and that legions on the other side are either snorting in disgust or, more likely, not paying attention.
Last night, Andrew Keen's new book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture, was discussed on the News Hour, and the author -- an erudite, irritated looking Brit -- was interviewed on the show.
His point seemed to be that we are all making too much noise, blathering on about our opinions with decreasing knowledge and increasing incivility. We're coalescing into oblasts of opinion, nuking others who don't agree with us, and in the process undermining civil discourse in larger or more traditional media venues that serve as the backbone of a democratic society.
Because we are all transformed into experts through the "radical democratization" of the Internet, we are losing the ability to listen and learn. Keen laments the death of expertise, fearing that it creates a din in the marketplace of ideas that drowns the most learned in the wrath of the loudest.
Becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a musician, a journalist, or an engineer requires a significant investment of one’s life in education and training, countless auditions or entrance and certifying excims, and commitment to a career of hard work and long hours. A professional writer spends years mastering or refining his or her craft in an effort to be recognized by a seasoned universe of editors, agents, critics, and consumers, as someone worth reading and paying attention to. Those in the movie industry submit to long hours, harried schedules, and insane pressure to create a product that will generate profit in a business in which expenses are high and hits are unpredictable. Can the cult of the noble amateur really expect to bypass all this and do a better job?
(His examples are revealing: he seems as concerned with losing his place as a writer and a font of knowledge as he is of YouTube swamping 20th Century Fox.)
Well, that's enough about Andrew Keen. Now, it's time for my opinion.
I can attest to the fact that blogging has created new relationships and new kinds of communities that don't replace, but that are also in no way inferior to, the traditional social or meritocratic circles that the author wistfully mentions. These communities coalesce around ideas, and voices, and values that can affect the world -- have affected my world -- for the better.
Keen acknowledges this, but thinks that the Web has become about chatter instead of change. When asked what he proposes to change, or what he wishes we would change in his interview last night, he said something like this: "I would ask that the 70 million bloggers in this country, when next sitting down at their computer, would honestly ask themselves, 'Does the world really need to know what I had for breakfast this morning?'"
Expertise is different from popularity, the author says. However, I would staunchly defend the expertise of Danny Miller or me True Ann-Sister: by virtue of their distinct kinds of omnivorous curiosity, they attract readers, divulge knowledge, explore new ideas, and participate in debates of their own creation with a depth to which a traditional expert would probably not condescend.
Unfortunately, as the author points out, civility is often trashed by the cloak of anonymity, and listening -- deeply, patiently taking in an author's point -- can die in a dumpster full of vituperative comment and libelous screed. Which is kind of fun -- like watching a train derail in slow motion.
But that's enough about me. What do you think of me?
--T.A.
